Blacker the Berry...

by Wallace Thurman

Book Overview

In The Blacker the Berry..., a classic yet provocative novel written during the Harlem Renaissance, a young woman must reckon with colorism in the Black community as she navigates 1920s New York City.

One of the most widely read and controversial works of the Harlem Renaissance, The Blacker the Berry...was the first novel to openly explore prejudice within the Black community. This pioneering novel found a way beyond the...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 068481580X
• ISBN13: 9780684815800
• Release Date: February 1996
• Publisher: Touchstone Books
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.3" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Sadly Disappointed

This has got to be the oddest book that I have ever read. Colorism did and still exist, but this is so over the top. I can imagine the criticism that this must have been up against during its publication in 1929. Poor Emma Lou took colorism to another level. I know both light and dark skin people have faced discrimination, but Emma Lou has been cursed since birth and she still believed that as she aged and moved away from home that things would get better, but she continued to have low self-esteem and all the things she endured, she still found that self-acceptance is the only way to go. I had a hard time relating to the author description of blacks with such odd terms. I thought that Alva was Oriental to only find out later that he was just light skin, and I thought Braxton was white until it was determined that he was just light skin. I hated that the continued to use the "N" word over and over. This book was full of too much Sociological and Psychological elements that it ruined the story. Why couldn't the author just tell the story and let us imagine 1929 without all this rhetoric.? Since the author was also dark skin like Emma Lou, I think he inserted some of his discrimination in the book to reach some realism. I simply hated the ending of the story. I want to read other works by this author but now I worry that I will be disappointed.

Stimulating

This was excellent read! For me it was an heartfelt and also tragic story in many ways for the main character Emma Lou! She does alot soul searching and tries to find herself. She has a lot of issues and the main one she deals with in the book is her skin complexion. If you love the book "Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison you will also love this book!

The Truest Story Ever Told

I am not afraid to look the reality of colorism in the eye and acknowledge that it does exist within the black community. It is my greatest hope and dream that someday the dark skinned black and the light skinned black will be seen as the one family in the future. I want so much to love the lightskinned sister and brother as my own reflection and not be divided from them or made to feel that one is treated better than the other, but sadly, that day is not here and this book bravely and powerfully illustrates that point to the fullest. I am a medium brown colored woman, my mother was very dark skinned and I have witnessed the evils of skin color prejudice all my life. In most situations, it was Black Men who were prejudiced against myself and the women around me beccause of our coloring. These men felt no shame or limit in their racist intra-family prejudice and measured their entire lives by how many light skinned or white women they could attain and how light brite their children could come out. It's everywhere and anyone who denies it is both a fool and a liar. That is why I highly recommend THE BLACKER THE BERRY by Wallace Thurman. There is no truer portrait of the self-hatred among our people than the one extolled in this book, and what makes it even sadder is that this book was written in the 1920's. So that only shows how deep this kind of evil runs. Lately, I have become very interested in this subject and I have searched for other books that explore this subject with intelligence, honest, beauty and wisdom and I have found several that I consider to be classics on the subject of Colorism. (1) MARITA GOLDEN'S book "Don't Play In the Sun" is definitely the most modern up to date book of the bunch. It expertly weaves the story of her life experiences in the 1960's Black Power movement with the current struggles of women like Serena Williams and India Arie to find their way in the world, even in the midst of being shunned and ignored by the black community itself. The book's analysis of the Hollywood casting system and the "Mulatto Follies" of BET and MTV is priceless. (2) "The Bluest Eye" by TONI MORRISON is by far the most riveting and painful book that I have read on this subject of colorism. I believe that her book, more than any mother, gets to the psychological and historical root cause of the problem and exposes the mode in which we pass the problem on generation to generation. The destruction of an innocent black girl named Pecola Breedlove will leave you heartbroken and shocked as you see the bold naked truth unfold right before your eyes. You can't ignore this book, because the story being told is the one that you are all too familiar with no matter what color you are. (3) "Flesh and the Devil" by African novelist KOLA BOOF is another deeply powerful book that examines colorism, but not out in the open. This book is unique in that it focuses on a very enchanting love story between a Black Prince and Princess and

the truth hurts

black people can be as cruel to their own as the white man, if not worse...this novel does an excellent job of pointing out racism between blacks of different shades, african-americans against africans, and upperclass blacks against lowerclass blacks.... by making emma a snob, wallace made her a believeable character instead of a martyr...also check out the way he send up the leading figures of the harlem renaissance ( langston hughes, zora neale hurston ) he shows harlem for the magical black mecca it is, and he doesnt have to exaggerate on it...i couldn't find anything wrong with it.

Black Readers Beware!

I've read this book several times and as an African-American who has dealt with this issue as a teenager, let me say that Black readers must beware! If you are among those looking for escapism, "positive images," and bourgeois fantasies, then read Ebony magazine- this is NOT the book for you. If you are looking for RAW reality that may cause you some discomfort but will AT LEAST make you think about your subconscious beliefs and bring about some serious self-examination, then GO for it! This and Carter G. Woodson's "Miseducation of the Negro" should be in every black person's home!

Excellent, could not put it down

Thruman's The Blacker The Berry was an outstanding piece of work. His vocabulary was exquisite. Emma Lou evoked sorry, shame, and anger in me all at once because I refused to accept her as the "underdog" and her constantly looking for the "right sort of people" to make her feel whole and accepted. I did feel empathy for her because she longed to be truly loved but did not recognize that the ultimate love comes from within and the sooner she accepted herself as a worthy human being she would forever be dissappointed in her relations with others. The book had a lot of passion and for a brief moment I thought Emma Lou was going to suffer a major depressive episode or commit suicide because she seemed so hopeless. The ending was unexpected and it left me wanting Emma Lou to say more.