In my quest to figure out good Xmas and Kwanzaa gifts for my people this year, I realized we always recommend movies, DVD's and VODs, but I've seldom read about good books here on S&A. So, I've compile a great list for of Black cinephile-based books for the filmgoing audience. Some you’re definitely familiar with, others maybe not, but nonetheless here it is:
Donald Bogle’s books
I’ve been reading Bogle's books for 20 years now, so considering I’m just on the precipice of my (eek!) mid-30’s, that’s saying a lot of the amount of Black film knowledge that he’s imparted to the masses for decades.
Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies & Bucks
Arguably Bogle’s greatest, if not simply his best known book, “Toms…” is the definitive study of American Black film images going back to the beginning with Birth of A Nation and continuing with recent years based on which edition you read. My 1989 edition ends with talk of Black independents, so right before Do The Right Thing was released, but if you want to find out the reasoning, psychology and real history behind Louise Beavers in the first and better Imitation of Life, about why Farina, Stymie and Buckwheat were such pickaninnies in Our Gang/The Little Rascals, or discover Bogle favorite ‘tragic mullato’ Nina Mae McKinney, this is the book to read.
There are so many editions, with so many different covers, so pick an updated one OR this recent hardcover edition.
Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams
While all of Bogle’s earlier work explores how Black folks were interpreted in film and in television, explores “Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams” in an often surprising fashion explores, "what happened just before the cameras rolled—or once the performers left the studio to go home... how people lived and socialized." As with “Toms, Coons…”, this books begins with The Birth of a Nation, going into the grossly unknown Black film pioneer Madame Sul-Te-Wan's work in D.W. Griffith's 1915 film and ends with the 1960s deaths of Louise Beavers, Nat "King" Cole and Dorothy Dandridge. As the dust jacket best reads, “Bogle tells the stories of the stars of Black Hollywood: their outfits, their love affairs and their struggles for better roles.”
Personally, I had no idea some of these folks were so buckwild back then. Ethel Waters alone will have you gasping for air!
Filled with a lot of confirmed gossip, with lauded help from Vivian Dandridge – Dorothy Dandridge’s sister and former dancing/acting partner, “Bright Boulevards…” also delves into non-performer playmakers on the Black Hollywood scene like California Eagle editor Charlotta Bass, studio shoeshine man Harold "Slickem" Garrison (who at the time was rated higher than Black actors), club owner Curtis Mosby, and successful architect Paul Williams, who designed houses for many stars, including Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, and who learned to write upside down so that he wouldn't make white clients uncomfortable while leaning over them to explain his sketches. This is a must-buy for anyone interested in Black film history.
Blacks In American Film and Television – an Illustrated Encyclopedia
This encyclopedia, the gem of my book collection, is what made me so knowledgeable of Black film and television even beyond what I had seen up to that point in documentaries and such. Very geek-like, I spent multiple hours in the local library in 1992 and the majority of the summer of 1993 reading this book and I couldn’t get enough. Pre-internet, and truth be told even know, where else would you find intricate, comprehensive and also first-hand knowledge about virtually unknown movies like “All The Fine Young Cannibals” (co-starring Pearl Bailey) or tv shows like Tenafly (Black detective show) and Palmerstown, USA (based on Alex Haley’s youth in Tennessee) or quick breakdown of ‘race” (see Black) films from the 1940’s like Miracle In Harlem? Pretty much no where else.
Especially of note are the biographies within of classic Hollywood actors, actresses and creative forces like Tim Moore (Kingfish from Amos N’ Andy), Amanda Rudolph (‘The Danny Thomas Show’) who very often is mistaken for her sister Lillian who had a longer and better established career, and the beautiful Vonetta McGee (Blackula) who’s also often mistaken with Lonette McKee (Sparkle, Jungle Fever), alongside notables like Oscar Michuex and Paul Robeson.
I bought a hardcover edition nine years ago from a little old lady off Ebay (true story), but it’s easier to find these days with Amazon.com having access to many copies, so there’s no excuse to not have it.
Other books of Bogle’s that I highly recommend are:
the recent Continuum Books update of Brown Sugar, a history of America’s Black female superstars in film, television and music up to 2008.
PrimeTime Blues – African Americans on Network Television is Bogle's only foray into a solid history of Blacks in television (including tv and cable movies)
Dorothy Dandridge: A Biography – which inspired Halle Berry to produce and star in her Emmy-Award winning tv movie and led her to super-stardom
But of course, there are many other fantastic books on Black film history and criticism.
Stephin Fetchit: The Life & Times of Lincoln Perry by Mel Watkins
The first African-American film superstar, Lincoln Perry, best known around the world as the lazy, shiftless, whiny and slow-talking comical sidekick Stepin Fetchit, was so much more than what he played in films. And in this full-scale biography by Mel Watkins, you’ll learn all about Perry, from his extravagant spending to his bankruptcy long after his Hollywood star faded, and so much more.
Black Hollywood: From 1970 to Today by Gary Null
Not much of a read, but never have you seen one that has so many great pictures (nearly 700) from Black Hollywood. A good friend of mine has this, I need to get a copy of my own!
Color By Fox: the FOX Network and the Revolution in Black Television
by Kristal Brent Zook
When starter shows like Mr. President and The New Adventures of Beans Baxter (I can’t be the only one who remembers these shows, right?) couldn’t maintain high ratings, the new FOX network during the late 80’s and early-to-mid 1990’s gained it’s highest revenues when White executives realized they should capitalize off the success of NBC’s The Cosby Show by focusing on Black households who actually watched more television than other ones and ultimately preferred Black shows. Out of this, shows like In Living Color, Roc, Martin and Living Single were born all produced, starring and often directed by African-American talent like Keenan Ivory Wayans, Ralph Farquhar and Yvette Lee Bowser and creating stardom for the actors, writers and producers that worked on them.
Zook’s book follows the struggles of these creators to bring about a truthful African-American experience to television and their battles with television executives who will only put up with so much from uppity negroes.
“Baad Bitches" and Sassy Supermamas
The title alone is cool, but if that’s not enough to make you pick this up then Stephanie Dunn’s foray into presenting the long excluded voice of the sisters from the Blaxploitation era in film should. As reviewer Kinohi Nishikawa ably states, “Baad Bitches” is notable for being the first book-length approach to this subject, the black feminist response to the cultural assumptions about gender that subtend “masculine criticism” of the genre.
Often the best thing in some of these awful films, Dunn focuses on the Black female-action heroine subgenre, offering perspectives from such famous actresses as the recently passed Tamara Dobson, and of course the most famous of them all, Pam Grier.
Not just a reflection or regurgitation of related material, Dunn delves into deep psychological issues of these movies and even moves into questions of what modern-day black female icons of empowerment would/should look like. Check it out ASAP.
Black in the British Frame: The Black Experience in British Film and Television by Stephen Bourne
One of Britain’s leading authorities on Black history, Bourne gives us an original account on the history of black people in popular British film and television.
Embarrassingly, I know practically nothing about Black media from Britain, save what our own Ms. Woo writes about on these very pages, and the little I’ve seen of Lenny Henry and Don Gilet starring on British tv shows like Chef! and Night Detective, respectively, so this book that I’ve seen in the stores recently is on my extra-short list to pick up…and it should be on yours too.
Some other noteworthy books worth checking out, in no specific order, are:
The Dawn at My Back: Memoir of a Black Texas Upbringing by Carroll Parrott Blue
(quoted from the Publisher)
In this innovative memoir, filmmaker Carroll Parrott Blue turns her lens on her mother's and her own lives as African American women in the segregated South before and during the Civil Rights era. This
mother-daughter story foregrounds two strong women who fought institutionalized racism—one through community activism, the other through artistic creativity—even as the effects of racism and their differing responses to it frayed the very fabric of their relationship.In telling this story, Blue underscores how strongly popular culture images of Blacks affected the lives of individual African Americans. She remembers movies such as Imitation of Life that she and her mother viewed together and fought about, ads that portrayed Negroes as unclean, TV shows like Amos 'n' Andy that perpetuated stereotypes—and shows how the unending barrage of demeaning images set her mother on a lifelong quest for self-improvement and middle-class respectability. Blue also describes how the same images, coupled with her mother's relentless efforts to impose essentially white standards of behavior and appearance on her daughter, created in Blue the desire to be a shaper of images rather than just a consumer, which eventually led to her becoming a photographer and filmmaker. Sweeping across the whole twentieth century, this mother-daughter story ultimately becomes a seething American history, the story of a growing African American awareness.
Black Film/White Money by Jesse Algeron Rhines
(quoted from the Publisher)
In this portrait of their historic and present day contributions, Rhines explores the roles African American men and women have played in the motion picture business from 1915 to 1996. He illuminates his discussion by linking the history of early black filmmakers to the current success of African American filmmakers, and examines how African Americans have been affected by changes that have taken place in the industry as a whole. It focuses on the crucial role of distribution companies, the difficulty of raising money for production, the compromises that directors and writers must make to get funding, and the effect of negative, sensationalistic images on the black community.
Black American Cinema by Manthia Diawara
(quoted from the Publisher)
(2003) In this volume, the work of early Black filmmakers is given serious attention for the first time. Individual essays consider what a Black film tradition might be, the relation between Black American filmmakers and filmmakers from the diaspora, the nature of Black film aesthetics, the artist's place within the community, and the representation of a Black imaginary.
Black American Cinema also uncovers the construction of Black sexuality on screen, the role of Black women in independent cinema, and the specific question of Black female spectatorship. A lively and provocative group of essays debate the place and significance of Spike Lee. Of crucial importance are the ways in which the essays analyze those Black directors who worked for Hollywood and whose films are simplistically dismissed as sell-outs, to the Hollywood ``master narrative,'' as well as those ``crossover'' filmmakers whose achievements entail a surreptitious infiltration of the studios. Black American Cinema demonstrates the wealth of the Black contribution to American film and the complex course that contribution has taken.
Soul Babies: Black Popular Culture and the Post-Soul Aesthetic by Mark Anthony Neal
(quoted from the Publisher)
From Sanford and Son to Snoop Doggy Dog, Soul Babies: Black Popular Culture and the Post-Soul Aesthetic looks at the last three decades of black images and representations. State University of New York, Albany, professor of English and Africana Studies Mark Anthony Neal focuses on the way that music, film and television were altered on the one hand by integration and on the other hand by the pessimism and social unrest among black Americans in the '70s and '80s. Neal also discusses the work of young black intellectuals of the "post-soul" generation, the first to be part of an integrated yet increasingly isolated academy.
(also published on Shadow And Act black media website)
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