Bookmarks: Reading in Black and White A Memoir

by Karla F.C. Holloway

"BookMarks is a moving and revelatory memoir... a work of fiercely intelligent scholarship." - Susan Larson, 

"Erudite and emotional in turns, [BookMarks] is full of truths that appeal to the head and the heart." - Charlotte News Observer"

What are you reading? What books have been important to you? Whether you are interviewing for a job, chatting with a friend or colleague, or making small talk, these questions arise almost unfailingly.  Some of us have stock responses, which may or may not be a fiction of our own making. Others gauge their answers according to who is asking the question. Either way, the replies that we give are thoughtfully crafted to suggest the intelligence, worldliness, political agenda, or good humor that we are hoping to convey.  We form our answers carefully because we know that our responses say a lot.

But what exactly do our answers say? In BookMarks , Karla FC Holloway explores the public side of reading, and specifically how books and booklists form a public image of African Americans. Revealing her own love of books and her quirky passion for their locations in libraries and on bookshelves, Holloway reflects on the ways that her parents guided her reading when she was young and her bittersweet memories of reading to her children. She takes us on a personal and candid journey that considers the histories of reading in children’s rooms, prison libraries, and “Negro” libraries of the early twentieth century, and that finally reveals how her identity as a scholar, a parent, and an African American woman has been subject to judgments that public cultures make about race and our habits of reading.

Holloway is the first to call our attention to a remarkable trend of many prominent African American writers—including Maya Angelou, W.E.B. Du Bois, Henry Louis Gates, Malcolm X, and Zora Neale Hurston. Their autobiographies and memoirs are consistently marked with booklists—records of their own habits of reading. She examines these lists, along with the trends of selection in Oprah Winfrey’s popular book club, raising the What does it mean for prominent African Americans to associate themselves with European learning and culture? How do books by black authors fare in the inevitable hierarchy of a booklist? 

BookMarks provides a unique window into the ways that African Americans negotiate between black and white cultures. This compelling rumination on reading is a book that everyone should add to their personal collections and proudly carry “cover out.”

Genres: Nonfiction, Books About Books, Memoir

240 pages, Hardcover

First published October 25, 2006

About the author

Karla FC Holloway is James B. Duke Professor of English at Duke University, where she also holds appointments in the Law School, Womens Studies, and African & African American Studies, and is an affiliated faculty with the Institute on Care at the End of Life and the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities & History of Medicine. She serves on the Greenwall Foundations Advisory Board in Bioethics, was recently elected to the Hastings Center Fellows Association, and is the author of many books, including BookMarks: Reading in Black and White; Passed On: African American Mourning Stories: A Memorial, also published by Duke University Press; and Codes of Conduct: Race, Ethics, and the Color of Our Character."

Reviews

[Crystal Belle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was beautifully written, describing the ways in which African American authors/academics often construct reading lists that prove their knowledge of "classical" European texts. The concept of "racialized reading" is discussed extensively through the reading lists of authors such as James Baldwin, Henry Louis Gates and Michael Eric Dyson. I am left thinking about my own college experiences as an English major, where the curriculum did not include one Black author. I had to read these books outside of the classroom. I wonder if there will ever be a day when lists of exclusively African-American/Black texts will be considered "scholarly" or literary enough? Hmmmmm....

[Ginna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have to admit that my favorite part of this book was the glimpses of Holloway's daughter, my childhood friend Ayana, that thread throughout. Ayana and I were fellow readers through middle school, and perhaps our discussions of our reading material had some of the qualities that Dr Holloway identifies here in her study of African-American reading patterns, library experiences, and booklists. We certainly identified ourselves to one another with our books -- perhaps in the same way this modern iteration of the booklist does as we broadcast our preferences and reactions across the internet to friends.
I appreciated the way that Karla Holloway linked each theoretical point she derived to autobiographical experience. What could have been drier material was a pleasure rather than a wade.

[Mert · Rating 3 out of 5]

3/5 Stars (%57/100)

Even though it is a memoir, it is not very personal as you expect it to be. We learn about Holloway's son not her husband or other children. We don't even learn a lot of things about the son either. It seems to me that this is a combination of personal and cultural experience. The book is essentially about well, literature. Holloway talks about a variety of writers and books throughout the book. The book is split into many chapters and in each of them, Holloway talks about an issue while connecting it to writers and their works. One of the main issues is the lack of African-American writers in the so-called literary canon. I liked it, in general, but it wasn't anything that I haven't learned already.

[Sebastián Vargas · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is definitely a book to read aloud!

[Melody · Rating 4 out of 5]

Karla Holloway's memoir is both erudite and deeply personal, an engaging and informative read that challenges lovers of memoir to think about the ways that African American authors mark race in their texts, not only by the ways the language they use, but by the books they list as influential in their lives. Holloway argues that booklists are a hallmark of African American memoir, and indeed, the whole text represents Holloway's list, and her reflections on a wide-variety of African American writers serve as entry points into the both cultural critiques and personal reflections. Interspersed with literary criticism come tantalizing memories of her son's death and her complex relationships with her own mother and her own daughter. She offers a brief history of the little-told story of the integration of libraries during the civil rights era, and a comical gesture toward her own misreading of John Grisham.

If you enjoy books and enjoy memoir, Holloway's text is both challenging, and a treat. It's not quite light reading, but rather a strong combination of enjoyable and provocative.

[Cara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this to be a really interesting book about African American reading and literature. I love how the author weaves her own experiences in with the booklists of the authors she is describing. It gives the reader a personalized context to better understand African American literary heritage and traditions.

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book will make anyone who reads it reevaluate their own collection to discover what the "important" books are and why they matter.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read that too in 450. I guess it was alright, but it also seemed like she was showing off a little...like the book was her own personal booklist, that she wanted everyone to know about.

[Kristin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lovely scholarly memoir that weaves Holloway's own life of books with those of other African American writers. It is a witness of reading and its power.

[Kaethe · Rating 2 out of 5]

boring