The Book of Negroes on BET

If it takes Black History Month to spark excellence on BET (Black Entertainment Network), so be it. I am talking about that station's airing this week of The Book of Negroes, the three-part miniseries based on the award-winning 2007 novel of the same name by Canadian author Lawrence Hill (which was originally published as Someone Knows My Name in the US, and rereleased under its original name this past January). Co-written by Hill and Jamaican-Canadian director Clement Virgo, and produced by Guyanese-Canadian Damon D'Oliveira and Virgo, the miniseries, original in six parts, initially premiered on Canadian Broadcast Channel TV in January, and was, to my mind, not just compelling TV, but utterly perfect in its historical and diasporic dimensions for Black History Month.

Aminata Diallo (Aunjanue Ellis),
speaking to abolitionists in London

The series, and Hill's novel, draw from the historical Book of Negroes, which the British Army, after its defeat in the US Revolutionary War, compiled as a means of documenting which people of African descent, many of them enslaved, had escaped to the British lines and aided its war effort. Those who could vouch for their contributions and who had no standing claims as chattel nor debtors were guaranteed their freedom and passage to Nova Scotia. Some 3,000 people qualified. In Hill's novel, which fictionalizes and reshapes the story, an enslaved woman, named Aminata (later Meena) Diallo and raised in the Muslim faith, from Segou in what is now Guinea, plays the central role in recording the names, later going on to testify before a select committee of British legislators in order to help end the British Slave Trade.

Aunjanue Ellis

In fact, the novel and miniseries center on Aminata's experiences. When we first see her, she is a child (Shailyn Pierre-Dixon) with her parents in Africa. Shortly thereafter, after hearing a djeli, or traditional storyteller, she is captured by slavers, assisted by a young native, Chekura Tiano (Siya Xaba), and on the slave ship, we see the early sparks of her lifelong as she provides the means for a near slave rebellion, which is violently quelled. Aminata and Chekura survive the Middle Passage, and she ends up on a South Carolina plantation owned by the lecherous Robertson Appleby (Greg Bryk). Here, as elsewhere, Aminata/Meena never forgets her family, Africa or her past; now into early womanhood (and played with aplomb and fearlessness throughout by Aunjanue Ellis), she befriends one of the older enslaved women, Bertilda (Cara Ricketts), who serves as a surrogate mother, and reconnects with Chekura (now the strapping, handsome Lyriq Bent), who manages to make infrequent nocturnal trips to see her, and uses the fishnet (or "slave grapevine," an effective proto-telecommunications system) to keep abreast of what she is up to.

Aminata in revolutionary New York

Much of this early portion of the story unsurprisingly parallels the usual depictions of plantation slavery, though Virgo's direction is assured throughout; a vile master, the hardships of the enslaved people, punishment for defiance. In Aminata's case, her relationship with and pregnancy by Chekura, whom she marries without the permission of and in defiance of her master Appleby, leads him to sell off her daughter May to unknown owners and eventually her to Solomon Lindo (Allan Hawco), a Jewish trader who becomes the witting and unwitting catalyst for Aminata's liberation. Witting, because his wife Rosa (Amy Louise Wilson), fosters the multilingual, perspicuous Aminata's skill at reading and writing. Unwitting because after Rosa's and the Lindo's child death from smallpox (and here, we get a strange moment of present-day irony because Bertilda had innoculated Aminata so as to protect her from the pox's ravages), Solomon takes her to New York, where she will serve and assist him in his business affairs.

The trip coincides with the stirrings of the Revolution, though Aminata's taste of freedom begins when she encounters free black people, including free black tavern keeper Sam Fraunces (Cuba Gooding, Jr.), who is smitten with her. (The depiction of Black Sam, both in Hill's book and the miniseries, takes some liberties, but some contemporaneous accounts apparently did describe Black Sam as a "mulatto" or mixed race person.) Aminata flees to precarious freedom among the city's black encampment while Solomon heads back to South Carolina, and Chekura, having learned of her whereabouts, finds her in the City. He also volunteers for the British side, as does she as an aide to Captain John Clarkson (Ben Chaplin). This creates the conditions for their unqualified freedom and her role as the author of the official Book of Negroes.

Aminata and Chekura Tiano (Lyriq
Bent), in Nova Scotia

To give just a bit more of the plot, Aminata and Chekura find themselves separated when authorities prevent her from boarding the ship bound for Nova Scotia because of a standing claim on her--but not by Solomon. It is Robertson Appleby, instead, who tries to game the law and gain control of Aminata before she can get away. Miraculously, Sam Fraunces produces (!) Solomon, her former owner, and countermands the claim, in the process and in court manumitting Aminata, though she tempers his heroic gesture by reminding him that she cannot forgive his role in selling off her infant daughter May. In Birchtown, the black settlement in Nova Scotia, Aminata emerges one of its leaders alongside preacher Daddy Moses (Louis Gossett, Jr.), but the economic and social conditions for the newly arrived black population remain shaky before they find themselves at the hands of rioting whites who blame for the loss of jobs and other privations.

Cuba Gooding Jr., who
plays tavernkeeper Sam Fraunces

The British have set up a colony in Africa, Sierra Leone, which Aminata and Chekura and nearly 1,000 other blacks from Canada will head to, together, and while there, in addition to helping to establish Freetown, the capital city, she hopes to see her native village again. As it turns out, Chekura is able to redeem his participation in their enslavement, though with tragic consequences; Aminata does find another village mirroring her native one, which may no longer exist; and she ends up, in her final chapter, moving to London to assist Captain Clarkson. It is there that she pens her own autobiography, despite the disbelief of her white abolitionist supporters and opponents (reminiscent of Phillis Wheatley's attestation), which with her testimony will play a key role in ending Britain's participation in the slave trade. There is a final, moving and lovely twist, which exists in both the novel and miniseries, and which the story certainly earns.

One of the actors during
a Revolutionary War scene

There are moments of anachronism throughout the series; at one point I felt, based on the dialogue in revolutionary New York and in Nova Scotia, as if I were watching a mashup of MTV and 1776; at another, at the very end, when Aminata participates in an outdoor public book-signing, which might have been possible though it seemed unlikely from a historical standpoint, it took me momentarily out of the story. All of the enslaved and free men are a bit too buff (a fact I am not really complaining about). In addition, though the screenplay mostly avoids sentimentality, but it does crop up at points, such as when Aminata and Chekura reunite in New York, but I chalked this up to the demands of portraying a story of such complexity that a little shorthand was necessary and not worthy of a quibble.

What works throughout is Aunjanue Ellis's characterization of Aminata. She fully inhabits this visionary figure of resistance, showing vulnerability when required but also conveying an inner fortitude that would have made possible the vast journey she traveled. Lyriq Bent also is strong as Chekura, and though he has less to do and say throughout, he succeeds in embodying the sort of man who could steal through the night, despite all obstacles, to be with her, and who is willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to atone for actions he could not have fully understood in his youth. Veteran actor Jane Alexander exudes the right combination of liberalism and racism in her depiction of Nova Scotian printer Mary Witherspoon, while Louis Gossett, Jr., as Daddy Moses, radiates joy in his role. I could not, however, stop thinking that I was watching Cuba Gooding, Jr., as opposed to Fraunces, but accepting this I was able to enjoy his scenes. This was true too for some of the secondary actors, who were uneven, but a few, like Matt Ward as Jason Wood, and Stephan James as Cummings Shakspear, endowed their characters with vivacity and gravity. All in all, I was impressed with the rich cast of mostly black Canadian and South African actors, and now want to see them--along with their African American, British, and Afro-Latin peers--much more frequently on screens, large and small.

Lyriq Bent

Other aspects of the miniseries are even stronger. The adapted screenplay transforms the novelistic material in appropriate ways, while also never faltering in its ability to properly and effectively depict expressions of black solidarity, love, and, between Aminata and Chekura, eros and tenderness. Another pinnacle is the cinematography. From start to finish, though it occurred primarily in Cape Town, South Africa and Nova Scotia, it sensorially and visually anchors each scene, whether the grim edged pastoral of Appleby's plantation; the frenetic (though perhaps far too clean) streets of revolutionary New York; and the chilly, snow-doilied hills of Birchtown and Nova Scotia. Even the period interiors, if sometimes too sumptuous when depicting the enslaved people's quarters, place viewers firmly in a past time and space. In terms of pacing, the series never lags. Each two hour installation races by--and around BET's sally of ads. I could easily have stood several more nights of this fascinating tale, though that would have gone beyond the novel's and story's scopes.

As entertainment, The Book of Negroes is a triumph, but it also succeeds in its efforts to highlight a still too-little known aspect of American, African American and African Diasporic history. In essence, it presents the history of black Loyalists, who had everything at stake by agreeing to support the British. It also shines a light on the contributions of a black woman who was unwilling every to cede her agency if she could help it, and in so doing, helped to change one of the most abominable systems that has gripped the globe. The novel and miniseries succeed in their efforts to present a fuller social and political economy of the slave trade, of black resistance and freedom, and of a feminist perspective on our histories--and herstories. I recommend, and will say don't forget the popcorn and the tissues for the tears that may come along the way, before you get to cheer at how this particular story does end on a high note.

For more about The Book of Negroes' historical facts and context, BET even has an iPhone/Android app!

Review: SiCKO + Charles on Harry Potter + Baldwin Hills

The other day, C and I went to see Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Michael Moore's new cinematic polemic, SiCKO. Having seen all of Moore's major documentaries--from 1989's Roger and Me to the pre-2004 election jawdropper Fahrenheit 911--I already possessed a strong idea of how Moore was going to present his argument formally and thematically, yet I was eager to see specifically what he devised. Despite the occasionally shopworn feel of Moore's shtick, SiCKO is a compelling and at times wrenching film; it's also a necessary addition to the public discourse both about our health care system and about our democracy more broadly. It succeeds in showing, with convincing accuracy (according to several independent reviews I've read), how abysmal--which is putting it mildly--the American private health care system is for those who have health care, but who aren't among the rich or well-covered by government health care plans. Moore very well could have focused on the 50 million or so who have no health care, a population larger than Spain, Canada or Australia, but instead, he looked at the system that the current administration, our Congress, and the insurance and pharmaceutical industry, along with right-wing ideologues and far too many "centrists" not directly attached to any of these institutions, are so determined to keep in place. Moore shows repeatedly how the US's intricate profit-driven health system, whose specific origins he locates at one point in a deal Richard Nixon cooked up after chatting with Edgar Kaiser of the Kaiser Permanente HMO conglomerate, and the decisions such a system entails, conflict, horribly in so many cases, with the ostensible goals of the medical profession and of a self-sustaining, healthy and caring society. Whether it's denying sick patients service because they're "out of network" (somtimes resulting in the patients' death), or trying to game and con and fend them off with the hope that they'll die before they figure out what's going on, or hiding options with the aim that they won't be used, or dumping ill people on the street to save money and then lying about doing so, Moore portrays the ethical rot, duplicity and inhumanity that are endemic, all in the name of funneling more dollars into corporate health care titans', shareholders' and their Congressional lackeys' pockets.

Using his typical set pieces, Moore contrasts the American system with those in Canada, the UK, France, and, to the consternation of those on the right and a number of mainstream media critics, Cuba, to show that in wealthy peer countries, as well as in the small, extremely poor, Caribbean nation, people not only receive equal or better treatment than our far more costly, often inadequate offerings, but pay little to nothing in direct fees, either for treatment or for medicine. In the case of Canada or Britain, the often decried waiting periods, Moore suggests, are no longer than many patients experience in the US, and in the case of France, which has one of the best health care systems in the world, the added benefits are so extensive that they may lead some to book a one-way ticket for Paris when they leave the theater. Moore does engage in a stunt when he takes several former 9/11 responders to the gates of Guantánamo Naval Base to see if he can get the same free, allegedly excellent treatment for them as the prisoners interned there, but this bit ends quickly and doesn't detract from the overall film; instead, it poses the absurd question of why people who have been (falsely in far too many cases) been deemed by W to be "the worst of the worst" terrorists we face are receiving medical care superior not only to "heroes," but to millions of Americans.

There was little in terms of the film's content, both horror stories and the positive aspects of the foreign health care systems, that I wasn't already familiar with, save the extent of France's social benefits, which verged at points on the fantastic--someone to do your laundry while you're out on maternity leave? That didn't blunt the cumulative effect of seeing so much easily preventable suffering and inhumanity. Why should citizens (or anyone) living in the richest country on earth have to choose which finger to have reattached or plead to have an ill child seen by a competent physician or lose their home and become penniless because of an illness? Why should 50 million people have almost no options whatsoever? Moore's film ultimately underlines how unconscionable and untenable our current system is, and how radically it needs to be changed. A fully funded single-payer system that emphasized prevention, and in which people could also purchase private care, seems to be the best option. But we can't have anything like it if we keep allowing our representatives to enable disastrous policies like the Iraq War.

In terms of specific criticisms, I wish that Moore had featured the experiences of people living medium-sized cities and rural areas in the foreign countries he visited. London and Paris are national capitals, and Toronto is Canada's largest city (though he did venture out to London, Ontario), but what would sorts of services and amenities would be available to people in Blackpool, Toulon, or Saskatoon? In terms of Cuba, would the kinds of excellent, free service Moore's troop received be an option for any non-Cuban? And what about in the even poorer parts of the country outside the capital city, Havana? I also wish he'd featured a few more comparison-style charts to make some of his points as clear as possible, and even incorporated a short debate between a proponent of our current broken system and someone who was advocating something better, fairer and more humane. Finally, Moore presented no solutions--except through implication--and the fact remains that each of the competing foreign systems he cites has its pros and cons, the major con being the kinds of higher taxes that a portion of this country's opinion makers congenitally rail against. (Unless, of course, they're paid by the lower middle and working classes.) Those critiques aside, SiCKO is one of the more powerful rhetorical weapons in the battle to improve our health care system; it will not be simple, because the opponents have both the money and the power, but it must and eventually will be done.

Addendum: Princeton economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman once again clearly lays out the problems today.

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I'm going to confess that I have not finished even one of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter books. I attempted to read the first one some years after C, who's read all of them, was starting on the fourth or fifth one, but I think I just wasn't in the right mood or mode. Though I rarely read young adult fiction, the narrative itself was enjoyable enough. But I only made minimal progress before putting it down and picking up--who knows what? A large percentage--a majority?--of my students have read all of them, however, so I consider my having not finished even the first to be a bit of a lacuna. (A year and half ago I completed Susanna Clarke's huge and deeply magical Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, and earlier this month I finished Philip Pullman's superb His Dark Materials trilogy, which several students had been touting, earlier this month, but neither Clarke's magicians nor Pullman's "new Eve" Lyra Belacqua is the beloved teen wizard Harry Potter.) I still, however, believe that Rowling's series is a major achievement, and one of these days, I will get around to it (just as I will read more of Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu beyond Swann's Way (A Côté Chez Swann), for example). Everyone I know who has read the books rhapsodizes about them--well, everyone except my former prof Harold Bloom, who went into extreme contrarian mode about the texts, though he exacted no damage to Rowling.

Bloom, it appears, is not alone. As the fifth installment of the film series (most of which I've seen and enjoyed) dominates box offices and the seventh and final (?) volume is set to appear this upcoming week, Washington Post critic Ron Charles issues a note of dissent, entitled "Harry Potter and the Death of Reading." He has tired of the novels and is glad that his daughter has too. He also sounds off about the saddening state--well, for writers, readers and lovers of the literary arts--of the blockbuster book business in this country, lamenting that the series have hardly succeeded in cultivating reading, not only among children, as various people have claimed since the first volume appeared, but among the series' many adult readers.

To quote Charles:

In "The Long Tail," Wired editor Chris Anderson suggested that new methods of distribution would shatter the grip of blockbusters. Niche markets would evolve and thrive as never before, creating a long, vital line of products from small producers who never could have profited in the past. It's a cheering notion, but alas, the big head still pretty much overrules the long tail. Like the basilisk that terrorized students at Hogwarts in Book II, "Harry Potter" and a few other much-hyped books devour everyone's attention, leaving most readers paralyzed in praise, apparently incapable of reading much else.

According to a study by Alan Sorensen at Stanford University, "In 1994, over 70 percent of total fiction sales were accounted for by a mere five authors." There's not much reason to think that things have changed. As Albert Greco of the Institute for Publishing Research puts it: "People who read fiction want to read hits written by known authors who are there year after year."

So we're experiencing the literary equivalent of a loss of biodiversity. All those people carrying around an 800-page novel looks like a great thing for American literacy, but it's as ominous as a Forbidden Forest with only one species of tree. Since Harry Potter first Apparated into our lives a decade ago, the number of stand-alone book sections in major metropolitan newspapers has decreased by half -- silencing critical voices that once helped a wide variety of authors around the country get noticed.

That's only a snippet; do check out the entire article.

Update: Audiologo, in the comments section, pointed out this Motoko Rich NY Times piece about Harry Potter's limited effect on children's reading.

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After years of drifting by mostly on toxic videos, Comic View, a handful of films, recycled news, infomercials, and a few series (like College Hill), Black Entertainment Television (BET), now part of the Viacom behemoth, is set to introduce a host of new shows, according to its entertainment president, filmmaker Reginald Hudlin. (One that has yet to appear, Hot Ghetto Mess, is already provoking a media firestorm, with sponsors pulling out and critics decrying what they see as yet another opportunity for negative stereotypes and portrayals.) We caught one of the first offerings, Baldwin Hills, a new reality show set in Los Angeles's eponymous, upper-middle-class Black neighborhood. For whatever reason--skimming, rather than reading the New York Times article, most likely--I thought the show was going to be a dramatic series covering a wide range of characters, but in fact it focuses on a cohort of very attractive teenagers and young adults primarily from Baldwin Hills, along with one or two from the nearby, rougher neighborhood of Crenshaw, whose lives intersect with the Baldwin Hillites. The young people's parents make brief appearances, but the emphasis is on the 18-to-20 somethings.

All of the participants, who fill out the usual reality show "types," are appealing, have good heads on their shoulders (to trot out that tiresome cliché) and, as far as I can tell, none appears headed for the kinds of violence-laden drama that has become a feature of College Hill. We see generous dollops of real bourginess (one young woman, Garnette, I automatically labeled a future head of Jack and Jill), but given the usual representations of Black people, particularly Black youth, on TV, I'm not complaining. What I most liked about the show, which I may or may not watch again, is how self-conscious everyone--except actress Vanessa Bell Calloway, mother of one of the young women--is before the camera. These young folks, as much as they've grown up in a media-saturated environment, still make it clear, through awkward pauses, self-monitored statements, and so on, that they know the world is watching. And as young Black middle and upper-middle-class people, no matter how much they refer to "pimping" (which one character, thankfully, described as a negative thing) or sass back at their parents (and there's a surprising, at least for me, amount of that), they still are aware of the need to act like they have home trainingand good sense. I.e., respectable. Everything changes, but at least among these denizens of Baldwin Hills, less so than the media might lead us to believe.