The Black Experience in the Twentieth Century: An Autobiography and Meditation (review)

The Black Experience in the Twentieth Century: An Autobiography and Meditation, by Peter Abrahams. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2000. 409 pp. ISBN 0-253-44844-6.

Peter Henry Abrahams's literary, political, and historical autobiography, The Black Experience in the Twentieth Century: An Autobiography (2000), is an enthralling and fascinating book that aptly captures the author's literary odyssey and vision of the world. It is also a tribute to his life-long companion Daphne Abrahams. From the outset it draws the reader into the author's intimacy and conveys well Abrahams's urgency to tell as he marvels at his longevity. The book unfolds with the announcement of a new millennium and closes with Abrahams's affectionate advice to his implied readers to appreciate family and to respect nature. Having lived almost a century, he advises youths all over the world with confidence and authority "to take up the struggle of life and to have it more abundantly, and to strive to do no harm" (407). The twentieth century having been ridden with racial problems, he calls upon his young readers to envision a raceless future world. This autobiography is a wonderful addition to the classroom and a great closing to Abrahams's rich, exciting life and brilliant literary career.

While Abrahams's The Black Experience in the Twentieth Century addresses all world readers, it focuses primarily on the black experience and is, as he writes, a tribute to "the darker peoples because they have been most neglected in our century" (408). As he contends in Tell Freedom (London: Faber and Faber, 1981) and reiterates in this work, his artistic role has been to present the non-Western, non-European perspective, "not as protest or criticism, but as part of the ongoing search for 'balance' in the desire to assert [the non-Westerner's] place in tomorrow's world" (64).

The Black Experience successfully meets this challenge as it probes W. E. B. DuBois's assertion that race was the problem of the twentieth century. As he remembers his life, Abrahams introduces major black thinkers and artists of the past century, such as W. E. B. DuBois, Kwame Nkrumah, and Richard Wright, and merges the world and political activities of the black Diaspora during the forties and fifties. His portrayal of the "Comintern" George Padmore is an intriguing supplement to that of Richard Wright's Black Power (Westport: Greenwood, 1974), just as his portrayal of Wright provides the reader with more insight into the character of the latter. Abrahams's reminiscences, spanning over almost a century, trace without complacency the lived history of blacks in the twentieth century.

The Black Experience is divided into three parts: "A World of War," "The Road to Coyaba," and "The Cold War and the Third World." The autobiography unfolds in "Loved Ones," with Abrahams's reminiscences of his childhood and the women who shaped his life and universal vision of the world. "DuBois/Garvey" presents blacks' varied responses to marginalization and racism. "The Cold War" relates Abrahams's exilic life during World War II, his literary development, and his political activism. In "Daphne/Paris" Abrahams justifies his marriage to Daphne and recounts his life with her in Paris and their eventual return to England. These accounts are interlaced with Third World politics and his travel to East and South Africa. In "Leaders and Leadership" he discusses the African political leaders that were instrumental in imposing political independence and relates his life in Debden. Finally, "Langston Hughes/USA" narrates Abrahams's New York visit, his impression of Langston Hughes, his visit to the South, and his thoughts on the ambiguity of African American identity.

The second part of the book, "The Road to Coyaba," narrates, on the other hand, in "A Farewell in Debden," Abrahams's return to Europe from the United States and his preparations for his Jamaican trip to write a book commissioned by...