Graham Taylor, ‘Blacks battling for their Identity, Freedom and Equality’, Jun 06, 1975, Tribune, 39, Volume 39, Issue 23, p.4-5.

Taylor’s review of Chinua Achebe’s essay collection, Morning Yet on Creation Day, Angela Davis’s Autobiography, James Baldwin and Nikki Giovanni’s A Dialogue, and Stanley Macebuh’s James Baldwin — a Critical Study.

On ‘James Baldwin and Nikki Giovanni sound far more radical to me when they insist that it is the individual who is important and that failure to recognise this can lead to disaster [..] A Dialogue is the transcript of a conversation taped for a television show in 1971. Much of the talk is fairly insubstantial, and there is very little developed argument. Where it is valuable, though, is in its discussion of the relationship between white racism and black male sexism; and Nikki Giovanni convincingly argues the need for black men to escape the stereotyped sexual roles which a racist society has forced upon them. Nevertheless, in view of the brevity of the dialogue and the fact that it’s now four years old, I can’t help that it would have been fairer to the reader had it been issued as a pamphlet rather than as an expensive hardback.’

Stanley Macebuh’s critical study of Baldwin is earnest and enthusiastic, and usefully places Baldwin in a wide context of black literatures. Also, his central thesis, that Baldwin’s work needs to be viewed in the light of his early religious beliefs and gradual emancipation from these, is well-argued and firmly established, though a secondary them — that Baldwin’s view of homosexuality is as a “potential for regeneration” — remains a little obscure. Unfortunately, Macebuh’s style is wordy, repetitious and extremely convoluted. His language dulls the mind even as his ideas excite it, and this makes very heavy reading of what could have been, with considerable pruning, an illuminating book’.