Read Until You Understand

Starred review from July 12, 2021
“What might an engagement with literature written by Black Americans teach us about the United States and its quest for democracy,” asks Griffin (Uptown Conversations), a comparative literature and African American studies professor at Columbia University, in this remarkable triptych. Blending memoir, political musings, and literary criticism, Griffin considers novelists, essayists, poets, and musicians as she recounts growing up Black and embracing her community. In “The Question of Mercy,” poet Phillis Wheatley’s concept of mercy (which “brings her Christianity”) meets Toni Morrison’s (as it relates to freedom). “Rage and Resistance” recounts how Griffin discovered the poet Frances E.W. Harper, who set her “on the path to becoming a scholar,” “The Quest for Justice” explores representations of justice in Black literature recalls the killing of Philando Castile, and “Black Freedom and the Idea(l) of America” studies the writings of Frederick Douglass and Malcolm X and pinpoints their influence on Barack Obama. Throughout, Griffin writes with learned poignance: “Our writers and our organizers make poetry of the rage. They have been working, building, creating, envisioning, showing us how to live like the future we are hoping to build is already here.” Perfect for literature lovers, this survey and its moving insights will stick with readers well after the last page is turned.

September 1, 2021

Part-memoir, part-literary study, this book has something for everyone. Griffin (English, comparative literature, and African American studies, Columbia Univ.; Harlem Nocturne: Women Artists and Progressive Politics During World War II) tells her own history, intertwined with analyses of Toni Morrison's novels, Barack Obama's autobiography, and other Black literature. Griffin includes excerpts and context from the texts, so readers don't need to have read them (though Griffin encourages it). The book is organized thematically instead of chronologically, illustrating that the works often mirror contemporary Black experiences regardless of their age. Griffin writes evocatively about themes of joy, beauty, love, justice, mercy, and death, with concise language and varied sentence structures. When she describes her experience of her father's death, the sentences are short and urgent, matching her worry and confusion; in the chapter on beauty, the sentences become more elegant and descriptive. VERDICT Griffin offers a personal exploration of literature that's historical yet still relevant; readers of the works cited will be interested to learn Griffin's interpretations.--Natalie Browning, Longwood Univ. Lib., Farmville, VA

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from August 1, 2021
An impassioned inquiry into the literary roots of Black culture. Griffin, a Guggenheim fellow and inaugural chair of the African American and African Diaspora Studies Department at Columbia University, delivers a glowing "series of meditations on the "fundamental questions of humanity, reality, politics, and art" by way of personal memoir and a thematic reading of Black literature, history, music, and art. The author begins by honoring her father, whose influential shadow looms large. Toni Morrison's words, like her father's, "shaped the way I saw and thought about the world." Phillis Wheatley jump-started Griffin's inquiry into the concept of mercy, also reflected in novels by Charles Chesnutt and Morrison's A Mercy, which, like Wheatley's poems, made her consider how writing might also be an "act of one's will to be free." In "Black Freedom and the Idea(l) of America" Griffin juxtaposes two giants of Black American history, Frederick Douglass and Barack Obama. Douglass "provided the ground from which Obama ascended," and the former president's Dreams From My Father demonstrated how Malcolm X informed his "understanding of Black nationalism." Addressing the painful question of justice regarding slavery, racism, segregation, and mass incarceration, Griffin turns to Richard Wright, Ernest Gaines, and Morrison for answers. The author discusses the legacy of resistance via the works of the 19th-century abolitionist writer Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and Toni Cade Bambara, whose works show "rage felt and expressed in disciplined emotions, organized and directed toward fighting injustice." Reading Langston Hughes, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Jesmyn Ward, Griffin ponders how "Black death haunts Black writing." James Baldwin's transformative fiction is "attentive to Black love," while Black music "made of us a people." Invoking Lorraine Hansberry's "pioneering" A Raisin in the Sun, Griffin also meditates on the joys of gardening: "Even in the midst of crisis, the flowers bloom." Throughout, like a mournful mantra, she calls their names: Trayvon, Breonna, George, and so many others. The power of reading provides the emotional engine driving this insightful, profound, and heartfelt book.

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