Ambivalent South
Mayer, Milton
Ambivalent South Neither Black Nor White, by Wiima Dykeman and James Stokely. Rinehart. 371 pp. $5. Reviewed by Milton Mayer This is a good book to read. And that is saying much more than that...
...Stokely, is a good poet...
...If habitues of America's racial torment—and I am one such habitue— find Neither Black nor White too good to put down and too important not to have read, it seems more than likely that our friends who confess (or should confess) less familiarity with that torment should have this book placed in their hands...
...They will like it...
...The theme of the account is, in effect, that there is no theme...
...It is not that the South is neither black nor white racially, but that the whole situation of the South is mixed, and self-contradictorily mixed...
...It is a casually organized report of a tour of the 13 Southern states, within recent months, by a husband-and-wife team of Southerners...
...Thus the book is, like any good reporting, more authentic sociology than a sociologist ever produces, and, in addition, a job of the most readable kind of writing...
...And that is saying much more than that it is a good book, which it also is...
...One of them (perhaps both) is a good reporter, and one, Mr...
...and they will learn from it as much as an American needs to know about the American race question and the American South of 1958, root, branch, and hopeful blossom...
...incalculable waste of men and materials in the midst of vast fallow wealth...
...But the deepest contradictions are those of the spirit, and here poetry, such as this book so often reaches to, and not sociology is the only measure...
...they will like to read it...
Vol. 22 • April 1958 • No. 4
