Black Cool: One Thousand Streams of Blackness

by Rebecca Walker (Editor), Henry Louis Gates Jr. (Foreword)

Soft Skull Press proudly offers this tenth-anniversary edition of visionary essays exploring the glory and power of Black Cool, curated by thought leader and bestselling author Rebecca Walker, with a foreword by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Originally published in 2012, this collection of illuminating essays exploring the ineffable and protean aesthetics of Black Cool has been widely cited for its contribution to much of the contemporary discussion of the influence of Black Cool on culture, politics, and power around the world.

Curated by Rebecca Walker, and drawing on her lifelong study of the African roots of Black Cool and its expression within the African diaspora, this collection identifies ancestral elements often excluded from colloquial understandings of Black Cool: cultivated reserve, coded resistance, intentional audacity, transcendent intellectual and spiritual rigor, intentionally disruptive eccentricity, and more.

With essays by some of America’s most innovative Black thinkers, including visual artist Hank Willis Thomas, writer and filmmaker dream hampton, MacArthur-winning photographer Dawoud Bey, fashion legend Michaela angela Davis, and critical theorist and cultural icon bell hooks, Black Cool offers an excavation of the African roots of Cool and its hitherto undefined legacy in American culture and beyond.

This edition includes a new introduction from Rebecca Walker, a powerful meditation on the genesis, creation, completion, and subsequent impact of this landmark volume over the last decade.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Race, African American, Feminism, Black Literature, Anti Racist

194 pages, Paperback

First published February 7, 2012

Reviews

[Zanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I eat a huge, elaborate breakfast of oats, yogurt, luxurious dried fruits like dates, figs and apricots, nuts, fresh fruit, honey, cinnamon and herbal tea every morning, followed up with chocolate. While I'm lounging around wishing I'd been more moderate, my flatmate will make herself freshly ground coffee and toast spread with an indescribably aromatic combination of almond butter and fig preserve. The smell from the kitchen is intoxicating. I could react with envy and snipe at her meaninglessly. I could give in to the olfactory invitation and make toast myself, with frozen bread and whatever preserves I can muster, and make myself sick. But I've learned just to hover around the kitchen and breathe in the glorious fragrance.

This book is not about me or for me; it doesn't need me and it doesn't care what I think, and as well as being about terrible things that haven't and cannot happen to me, it's kind of about wonderful things I can't have. This is a humbling thing.

Written in love and pride, these essays on the perceptions and manifestations of Black genius, brilliance, beauty, spirit and solidarity are a diverse bunch. Like this reviewer I think the idea of an inherent 'Black Cool' is problematic (because it's essentialist, requiring monolithic definitions of Blackness, Cool etc), and while the book's blurb claims 'the ineffable aesthetic of BLACK COOL' as a subject, the form chosen by Walker has contributors fruitfully reflecting on aspects, 'streams' of cool, rather than struggling to nail down its nature. As a result, Black culture emerges arrayed in fabulous riches; multivalent, indestructable, transforming and transcending pain with intellect, strength, creativity, passion...

I particularly loved dream hampton's astonishing personal story, Valorie Thomas' sophisticated discussion of diaspora vertigo and the power of vernacular culture and Dayo Olopade's postcolonially oriented essay on hipsters. Best of all is bell hooks' piece 'Forever', which tackles the difficult subject of the 'disassociation, hardheartedness, and violence' that she sees in 'most hip-hop culture', in contrast to the values of awareness, connectedness and judgement of the historical 'real cool'. While the blues manifested resistance to the patriarchal notion that 'real men' show no emotion, hooks writes, the new cool male 'proves his manhood by remaining rigidly attached to his position, refusing to change'

Much hiphop culture is mainstream because it is just a Black minstrel show - an imitation of dominator desire, not a rearticulation, not a radical alternative. It is not surprising then that patriarchal hip-hop culture has done little to save the lives of Black males and done more to teach them that the vision of "we real cool" includes the assumption that "we die soon"

In other words, I'll venture, in its corporatised, White-appropriated, patriarchal form Black cool can be turned back on itself as a form of racist violence and oppression. Hank Williams Thomas makes the same point in his piece 'Soul', discussing the cynical exploitation of Black style by Nike. The really cool thing about this book is that it presents so many 'streams of Blackness' that are immune and resistant by nature to commodification and White supremacist patriarchy. They cannot be used up, sucked dry, sold out. No chance.

So here I am peeking into the kitchen, trying not to make a nuisance of myself, happily basking in the sweetness that flows out so lavishly...

[chantel nouseforaname · Rating 5 out of 5]

The richness that can exist when Black folks come together!!! This is it. Honestly, each essay was luminous. Big names (bell hooks, Rebecca Walker, dream hampton, Michaela angela Davis, Margo Jefferson, Miles Marshall Lewis and more) are present writing about their definition of and experience with Black Cool.

Black folks are not a monolith. The depth of experience discussed by each contributor in this collection shines a light on the prismatic quality of Black life, Black people and of course the variety of Black cool that lives and breathes in the culture.

[Diana McClure · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this book was like taking a deeply satisfying expansive breath that left me basking in a sea of gentle inspiration! It affirms life, black life, diversity and offers a grounded fulfilling counterpoint to mainstream media simplicity. Accessible contemporary wisdom and intelligence. Highly recommended! (Note: I did not read Henry Louis Gate's intro!)

[Hafidha · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book, despite not wholly buying into the premise that there is an inherent "black cool" as opposed to a culture of black cool. But it is an interesting subject, and the essays I liked the best were those that described how perceptions of black cool manifest themselves in black communities and influence our interactions.

I didn't have to take the concept literally (though Walker doesn't think it's outrageous to do so) to appreciate the stories told here ... Stories of survival, betrayal, isolation, identity, and finding an outlet for expressing all of that. Many of the contributing writers are my peers or just a little older than I am (born in the 70s), so I could relate to a lot of these experiences. It didn't feel like being lectured to by elders.

My favorite pieces were Audacity, The Geek, Crazy, The Hipster, Forever, and Soul. I also really liked The Break, despite its overly academic tone at times. There are a few pieces I felt were weaker because they either tried too hard to make a case for literal black cool or the writing just wasn't as compelling. But overall, I enjoyed the storytelling, and the earnest and thoughtful minds at work, ruminating over a topic that has been alluded to so much in popular mainstream culture (and mined for consumer advertising).


pg 79: Even though popular culture has made the Black male body and presence stand for the apex of "cool," it is a death-dealing coolness, not one that is life enhancing, for Black males or the folks they associate with. Young males embrace a notion of cool that is about getting pussy and getting ready to kill (or at least making somebody think they can kill), because as an identity this one is easier to come by than the quest to know the self and to create a life of meaning. (from bell hooks' "Forever")

pg 23: Unlike "depressed," "crazy" had cachet, and it was thrown around in their circles. To be crazy was to be loved. My father would frequently say, "Man, he was crazy," but what he meant was: He was brilliant, he was bad, he was beautiful. He was unparalleled; his like will never come again. My father once said the same phrase standing at the foot of Egypt's Great Pyramid of Giza - "Man, that's crazy" - and I understood that he meant the same thing. (from Rachel M Harper's "Crazy.")

pg 41: But, in a sense, Mailer was right: The hipster will always be defined in opposition to majority culture. For the white hipster - torn between ironic, "who cares if I'm wearing a tracksuit" detachment and the exhibitionism required to perform the trend - such opposition requires effort.... Lacking both social outsider ship and whatever traces of melanin that would brand one as truly outré, young white Americans are forced to perform any distinctions with aggressively curated eclecticism. John Leland calls this "Caucasian kitsch." (from Dayo Olopade's "The Hipster" )

[Glenda Nelms · Rating 4 out of 5]

Black Cool: One Thousand Streams of Blackness is an inspiring and empowering book of perspectives on what is Black Cool. Originally published in 2012. The writers who contributed to this essay collection Professor/Author Bell Hooks, writer/filmmaker Dream Hampton, Fashion legend Michaela Angela Davis, Visual artist Hawk Willis Thomas, photographer Dawoud Bey, and many more. I recommend everyone reading Black Cool.

"Because, Black People, we are a posse, a tribe, a collective, a crew. We know we are better together. We know our power lies in the sameness of our situation and the difference of our stories, but at the end of the day: this Us-ness, wherever we find it, is how we roll best. Don't forget who can love into wholeness."-Rebecca Walker

[Darkowaa]

... thoughts to come later

[Van · Rating 1 out of 5]

The first thing black people need to understand is that a miscegenated blend of "indian", "dutch", and "whatever," is not who we are; it's what happened. I have in me Blackfoot and Cherokee, Welsh, and whatever else by incident, doesn't mean "this land is your land, this land is my land." It just means that's what happened.

So, again, first thing to understand, we are not a miscegenated blend of "everything," we stand on our own identity. If we are a "nation," it is our own; civilized by no other authority than the majority blood of Afrakans who first imagined and built it -- we were democratic before Greeks put the dirty finger in, after all. Second thing to understand: this is not a crime, unless we will also indict the criminal nations (or dirty fingers) to which "we" so desperately cleave in our blood. So, let's get it straight.

My personal mantra, and what this collection of essays so rudely calls out in me, is that I am, for the third time, not some miscegenated, cool, 'bitches brew' of "dutch, jew, cherokee," or whatever. I have in my blood, rather, family, friends, and fiends, and I am not helpless, or without condition, in deciding which is whom.

Black Cool is conversely a collection of "black" authors trying to emphasize that they are everything but that, and "this" makes them cool. That's right. A book about "black cool" mostly by folks who don't really self-identify as black, want to be black, or even consider themselves "wholly" African, means to define, for us, "black cool." The story, therefore, begins by emphasizing our "light-skinned," multi-racial, "white" humanity, to suggest that black does not really exists, and when it "does" is quite reprehensible in that socially stigmatizing, violent, cowardly, and indiscriminate dark "manichean" sense; or is passive, transcendent, "Jesus-like," and 'resilient,' to be racially feckless, in the same. This, of course, with the exception of a few light-skinned, green-eyed, angry (or not) black women, who might convince us out of our "fear of fight" and will that we "fight for power" more than we "fight the power" to preserve an autonomous, non-posthumous, place for "black authority" in life... *shrug* and that's pretty helpful stuff to consider if one desires to think beyond established horizons.

Frightening how we otherwise aspire in life to the fictive design and measure of our "once and future masters." Black Cool is unfortunately, in three words, thus equally contrived. Not for me.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

To quote the reviewer Zanna, "This book is not about me or for me; it doesn't need me and it doesn't care what I think, and as well as being about terrible things that haven't and cannot happen to me, it's kind of about wonderful things I can't have. This is a humbling thing."

I loved this book. I wish I could tell you my favorite essay or story, but I can't choose. Each one stood out on its own for its own merits and excellence. I wrote down so many quotes from the writers. I looked up so many new (to me) things on google - artists, ideas, times, places. It's a beautiful collection of people and their voices.

[Louise Silk · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's interesting to read the other reviews of this book. It seems that blacks were much more critical and less likely to engage in the writing as "cool". But for a white Jew like me, the writing was fascinating, insightful and really way cooler that I would ever have predicted. I'm not a fan of essays but these offer something that is rarely verbalized and worth taking the time to read and think about.

[Amber Nofetari · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. From Michaela Angela Davis' perspective on fashion and being a mixed-race girl in the industry to Dream Hampton's epiphany of her strength as a woman to Hank Willis Thomas' first pair of Jordans "Black Cool" truly explores what it means to be a person of color and discover the beauty of our innate style. I totally recommend this beautiful little anthology.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just finished reading the book, Very inspiring and caused me to have a self evaluation. A must read.

[Izetta Autumn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many of the concise and well-written essays in this collection have been beautifully rendered. I am particularly touched by dream hampton's "Audacity," Rachel M. Harper's "Crazy," "Resistance" by Michaela angela Davis, "Eccentricity" by Margo Chambers and "Hunger" by Veronica Chambers. hampton addresses an attempted rape in her childhood - balancing rage, voice, and insight - in a brave and thoughtful essay. Chambers delivers an essay which connects appetite with coolness and suggests a new understanding of black hunger. All of the authors connect pain and struggle with that ephemeral power of black cool. "Soul," by Hank Willis Thomas is one of my favorite essays in the collection as he speaks of the death of Songha his cousin and model for cool.

I would have loved a piece that perhaps was more overtly connected to fashion. All of the pieces in one way or the other gesture toward fashion, but there is no essay devoted to the wonder that is black fashion and sartorial aesthetic.

But overall, Walker has made connections and brought together a series of very interesting and compelling voices.

[Camille · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book as part of an ongoing meditation on the tech industry and appropriation of hip-hop and black male swagger (despite the exclusion/erasure of black bodies). The gorgeous pieces in this book make so many of the points I wish to make. Now I need only draw the lines from there to here. bell hooks, Mat Johnson, Staceyann Chinn, and so many others paint the many hues of black cool, big and bold, yet subtle and precise.

This book is absolute perfection from beginning to end. I am grateful that my frustration with this phenomenon in my industry lead me to seek out perspectives on what it means to be black and cool and better understand why others reify it while at the same time "trying us on like costumes before discarding our bodies like rinds of strange fruit" (Thanks, Jesse Williams).

I'm definitely gonna buy it so I have it as a reference. I'm certain I will need to pick it up many more times and will definitely be gifting it to friends and family. If you've taken Adichie's admonition to be wary of the single story, you'd do well to pick this up and immerse yourself in the great (and impossibly cool) multitudes.

[Rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

White people will benefit greatly from this book. However my fellow Caucasians, remember this. This book is written by black people (mostly American Black people) who are creators of black culture (many different forms of black culture). My white brethren, read this book as a person willing to appreciate and learn about a culture that maybe you've never seen. It is all around, but white privilege means we can ignore black culture or pay attention to it as we please. We ignore it to our own impoverishment and our unwillingness to celebrate that which is not from us and for us contributes to America's decline. "Black Cool" is hard for white people to understand, yet we should try. In the effort, we take one step toward saying, "Yes, there is more beauty in America than just that which is from whites and for whites." No, we can't be "black cool." We can't own it, create it, appropriate it, or reduce or squash it. But we can be blessed by it if we humbly appreciate it.

[Tomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved everything about this book except for Henry Louis Gate Jr.'s parenthetical foreword and Margo Davis's essay. The rest of the essays, by outstanding black authors, were well-written and edited. The best thing is that each essay brings a truly unique perspective to the topic of "black cool." Some essays, though, are truly outstanding for their sheer power and good writing, like "Audacity" by dream hampton. Another reason why I really liked this book is because it introduced me to a slew of new, young black writers. "Black" in this book is defined beyond African-American to include Americans with origins in the Caribbean and modern Africa.

[Brandon Will · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well balanced anthology that exposed me to great ideas and perspectives and great writers I'll want to follow from now on. Esther Armah lays down some profound words about this being the time for the emotional justice movement. Veronica Chambers traces the importance of sharing a meal and communal eating through the Harlem Renaissance to today. Dayo Olopade takes back the word 'hipster' through an image laced contextual global history. Rachel M Harper says things about her brilliant, scary, and cool artist father with thoughts on what we insist on calling depression these days that signed me up to read every word she ever writes. And those are just some of the ones that struck me the most.

[Bri Hudson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm about halfway through this book and I think it's a wonderful re-introduction to my former life (where I read books instead of streamed tv to my computer). The essays are good. Some of the authors are familiar, some aren't. They're all personal and all hit on topics near and dear to me. Rape, the "strong black woman" phenomenon, defining hipster, mental illness among artists. I find myself highlighting thoughts, phrases and Ideas I'd like to further explore in my own writing and even my own expression of "Black Cool"....

[Rianna Jade · Rating 4 out of 5]

Honestly, I expected a little bit more. Some essays were a hit and miss for me. BUT quite a few were bang on point and the writers were able to articulate some ideas and feelings about the authentic Black experience that I was struggling to express. And I'm grateful for that.

[Black Bibliophile · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was refreshing reading these extremely diverse perspectives of what is black cool. I especially enjoyed Michaela Angela Davis' fierce protective stance on the innovative qualities of black style. Would read again.

[Taylor Hess · Rating 5 out of 5]

Each writer is vividly distinct in their style, voice and understanding of cool. Easy to read but I think worth reading a second time to get the full experience of this collection of essays. What transcended the whole was how clearly Rebecca Walker carefully constructed it. Themes of masking, creativity and the hijacking of cool from being about community to individualism come up again and again as well as racism and feminism.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

So many writers who articulated things that are typically difficult to pinpoint about black cool. I saw so many reflections of relatives, neighbors, kids i grew up with... aspirations of who I want to be! Great read!

[Frances · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent 🖤

[Ingrid Drexler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully rich & profound. A work of art. Thank you!

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Real cool, the cool that is forever, stirs the imagination."

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the variety of contributors and topics. Each essay is only a few pages so it's super easy to get through. Some standouts for me were The Geek by Mat Jonson, Evolution by Miles Marshall Lewis and Forever by Michaela angela Davis.

[Eric C. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Various views and perspectives on what Cool is for people of African descent. Black Cool can be many things. One thing about Black Cool: it is ours and can not be taken from us.

[Gina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I would have appreciated these essays a lot more if they had been more substantial. That said, there were some that managed to pack a punch in a few pages, especially Audacity, The Geek, The Hipster, Soul, The Scream, and Evolution, which ranged from personal stories to more of a long view of black culture. The ones I tended not to like spoke more of blackness as an intransmutable thing, especially Resistance, which used the infuriating technique of talking about something by saying "I'm not even going to talk about ______."

I found it interesting that several of the authors are mixed or otherwise very light skinned but only The Scream by Ulli K. Ryder really addressed the combination of black cool with something else in one person straight on. As someone who's not mixed but has been called an Oreo back in the day for getting high grades and liking My Chemical Romance, I probably bristle at mixed people's seemingly easy acceptance of black cool because I have a hard time accessing it myself.

Another Goodreads review said that they noticed black people tend to be more critical of this book and maybe it's because the length makes it feel shallow for a subject that manifests itself daily in people's lives.

[Lisa Barr · Rating 5 out of 5]

I knew Rebecca when she lived in Brooklyn NY. She was a cool woman who was just Becca to us...oh, yea the daughter of Alice Walker (squeel!!) This book is a must read for those who are open to writers like: dream hampton, Helena Andrews, Veronica Chamers, bell hooks, Michaela angela Davis Mat Johnson, Dayo Olopade and 10 others who are considered this countries most innovative thinkers as they explore the ineffable aesthetic of what is "Black Cool". It is a book for the geek, the reserved, the hipster and the eccentricity in us all. I found myself deeply moved, challenged, angered and curious which I know is a lot of emotional roller-coaster riding in 164 pages. What I know is that Becca asked each writer to describe what they thought Black Cool was and each writer delved deeply into their own emotional reserve and truly put it all out there. Each chapter is only a few pages, but you will drinking in every word. It will cause you to re-think what you consider 'cool' and it is one that I think empowers both men and women to become better people, better at taking care of the world, better at listening and observing each other, and just better at being cool themselves.

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

Essays on what it means to be “cool” as a Black American in the 21st Century, the book’s biggest shortcoming is the narrow range of voices featured. Yes, the twelve included essays cross a range of ages and subjects and background, but they were all written by intellectuals, who let’s face it, are a minority in America. I enjoyed the essays, but they read more like a group of friends getting together and sharing their (mostly similar) opinions rather than a serious discussion. Black Cool is less “one thousand” and more “one type of cool in twelve different flavors.”

Black Cool reminded me a bit of Joumana Haddad’s I Killed Scheherazade. Both are worth a read because they challenge and dismantle stereotypes and generalizations. Both are also more opinion than a definitive comment or analysis. Recommended.