Finishing up Black History Month with these last two movies. I am going to continue watching (great list of movies, here), reading, and educating myself, about Black History, about the history of Indigenous People, and all the people who I can leverage my privilege for. As well as fighting for myself, as a woman.

So, BlackkKlansman. I wasn’t sure, at first, when it was set (1979), but was definitely enjoying the afros and was definitely rocking out to the Cornelius Bros & Sister Rose. (I wore out a 45 of this song, back in the day, along with Treat Her Like A Lady.)

The story of Ron Stallworth, Black cop, infiltrating the KKK, is a true one, although Director Spike Lee changed a few things around and put his own stamp on it.

Some of the things that hurt my heart were how little some things have changed in the last 40 years. And that sleazebag David Duke is still alive and apparently, doing just fine, financially. The movie is entertaining, and yes, the music is awesome, but it’s also highly thought-provoking. Watch it.

If I was deeply moved by Black kKlansman, I was blown away by I Am Not Your Negro, released in 2017. Reviewer Paul Byrnes put it thusly:

I Am Not Your Negro is an utterly brilliant film – bold, galvanising, even gripping – but I’m not sure what to call it. It’s not a biography of James Baldwin, the black American writer whose words make up the script and are spoken with whispering fire by Samuel L. Jackson; it’s not quite a documentary, because that would not describe the free-ranging and impressionistic way in which Haitian-born director Raoul Peck (Lumumba) puts it together. It’s an essay film then: a meditation on America, focusing on the last 60 years, for half of which Baldwin was the pre-eminent literary voice for, perhaps even the conscience of, a rising African-American consciousness.

Another reviewer called this a posthumous collaboration. It left me in tears, in a figurative ball on the floor, gasping for breath. And although my understanding of what it meant and means, to be Black in America will never be complete, I feel a lot closer to wrapping my mind around it, after seeing this.

I challenge you to watch the trailer, above, and not want to see the whole thing.

Baldwin died of stomach cancer, at age 63. I have to wonder how much of that was from swallowing a lifetime of pain and insults.

And now… the question is which of his works I am going to read, in the near future.

The First Reviews of Every James Baldwin Novel

If you’ve watched either of these movies, what did you think?
What is your favorite James Baldwin novel, if you have one, or what are you going to read first?
Your thoughts?