Review by Choice Review
The distinguished African American Shakespearean actor William Marshall (1924-2003) found a way to lead a double professional life: he did fine work rendering the words of the immortal bard on stage and also made films that pointedly played to audiences of black American youth (for example, Blacula). Means Coleman (communication, Univ. of Michigan) attempts the same sort of feat with this single volume: she plays to a scholarly readership but writes in the voice of black fans. The tone of the book is set in the foreword, in which Torriano Berry (Howard Univ.; African American filmmaker) describes a "post-slavery Amerikkka" in which black audiences rifled the current crop of movies in search of "new race pride and social awareness." To make sure readers get this double-coded inquiry, Means Coleman provides a 20-page lucid, street-wise introduction, which paves the way for her wide-ranging walk through the horrific racial politics of The Birth of a Nation (1915) and on to the blaxploitation movies of the 1970s, films that thrilled black city kids. All in all, a tour de force--a scholarly tome with a cool touch. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; general readers. T. Cripps emeritus, Morgan State University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
