Race: An Anthology in the First Person

by Bart Schneider

What is your race? In September 1994, The Hungry Mind Review 's readers responded to this and nineteen other race-related questions in the periodical's now-renowned Race questionnaire. It was during the compilation of that particular issue that editor Bart Schneider recognized that Americans were ready for, and needed to have, a frank discussion about race.

Inspired by the momentum that September 1994 issue generated, Schneider compiled An Anthology in the First Person . In a range of twenty first-person idioms, some of the finest American contemporary writers and social leaders explore the issue of race. The power of the first person voice that drives this collection is in its directness and simplicity, says it's you talking to me, me to you. It's Reverend Cecil Williams preaching to hundreds on a Sunday morning in San Francisco's Glide Church. It's Audre Lorde speaking to a women's conference in Connecticut. It's John Edgar Wideman talking in letter, and in spirit, to his son in prison. Listening closely to the human voice can keep us human.

Race continues what the questionnaire started by delivering direct and honest accounts of how race can impact an individual's life and alter the course of his of her future. To approach with passionate personal testimony a territory as fraught with suffering and shame, guilt and indifference, rhetoric and amnesia,  is to stake a claim, explains Schneider. It is to demand a place in which we can talk to each other about who we are and what we hope America might one day become. Race will open your eyes, expand your mind, and may finally be a way for us to get the conversation going.

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[Anthony]

"Race" is a collection of first-person reflections on the topic, compiled by Hungry Mind Review's editor in reaction to the overwhelming response of HMR readers to a 1994 questionnaire on race. The book was published in 1997, but reading it in 2017 during the early weeks of the Trump administration, as confusion about the "Muslim ban" and Congressional appropriations negotiations to fund the wall dividing us from the Mexico are nightly news banner headlines, I can't help but feel that nothing has changed over these two decades. This anthology brings together disparate voices and backgrounds from contributors like Bharati Mukherjee, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Adrienne Rich, and Richard Rodriguez.

Leslie Marmon Silko writes during the second term of the Clinton presidency: "...big capitalism can't survive for long in the United States unless the people are divided among themselves into warring factions. Big capitalism wants the people of the United States to blame 'foreigners' for lost jobs and declining living standards to the people won't place the blame where it really belongs: with our corrupt US Congress and president." Mukherjee writes about the scapegoating of immigrants. While we are richer, healthier, and better-educated than we were 20 years ago, we have made limited strides in being a more inclusive society.

While this anthology offers a gentle introduction to some literary and social commentary heavyweights (many of the essays are less than 10 pages long), the contributions don't necessarily speak to one another. Or maybe that's the goal, delegating the task of characterizing 'race' to the authors, leaving little overlap because our definitions are so private and personalized.

[Maria]

A couple of really good/insightful essays in this collection.

[Stacy]

There were a few gems in here.