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Be-Longing: Triumph in the Mirror
In this moving and lyrical coming-of-age story, Julius, a troubled kid from the south side of Chicago, battles haunting demons, both perceived and real, in his search for love and acceptance. Throughout his journey, he struggles at his core to find the meaning of love, and what it takes to be open, vulnerable, and present. Follow him through years of seeking connection, failed relationships, and depression, until at long last, his journey brings him face to face with himself and God.
276 pages, Paperback
Published January 27, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
August 2, 2017
This is a fantastic book that captures the essence of a young black male going to college and living life. I am having my son read it to understand the perils of being vulnerable, open,and honest in a society that preys on young men. Dr. Bailey lays his heart and soul on the line with positive notion that you will learn from his mistakes. I respect any person who has the courage to lay it on the line to help others. I would read this book again and give it to my nephews.
August 1, 2017
Dr. Julius D. Bailey, Ph.D. is a beloved professor of philosophy at Wittenberg University in Ohio. As an author, his books include ‘The Cultural Impact of Kanye West,’ ‘Philosophy and Hip-Hop: Ruminations on Postmodern Cultural Form,’ and ‘Racial Realities and Post-Racial Dreams: The Age of Obama and Beyond.’ Dr. Bailey is not only brilliant but also one of America’s most relevant intellectuals.
Bailey’s memoir is far from a work of dry academic records. In fact, he’s one the most honest, relatable people ever to set down their life stories. In one chapter he writes about the game of bingo as a lifeline, and I couldn’t help but think of Roxane Gay’s entry into the world of competitive Scrabble as she describes it in her collection of essays ‘Bad Feminist.’ Like Gay, Bailey is an African-American intellectual and a person of size in American culture. Like Gay, Bailey has been abused and marginalized by that culture but has survived with passion, wit, humor, and a consummate love for pop culture.
The author of the foreword is noted author and TV personality (currently appearing on OWN) Iyanla Vanzant. Her insight into Dr. Bailey’s book is it explains the work that has to be done for African-American men to be able to do the healing that Vanzant recognizes that they need in their lives. Dr. Bailey fell in love with Vanzant’s goddaughter, the Rev. Chinaza Deborah Lee. Vanzant thinks the important work of healing has much to do with the relationships with women, not only with relationship partners but also with mothers.
Bailey opens his memoir with an anecdote relating to his lover during his college years, Marshonda, a green eyed beauty he nicknamed “Maggie with the cat eyes” because she reminded him of the Tennessee Williams heroine. He was ashamed of his body because of his obesity. Marshonda forced Julius to look in the mirror at himself. She asked him, “Do you dare to love that man?”
Bailey was raised by a single mother, Sandra Hoskins, who was only 15 when she met his 20-year-old father Michael Hill (and 16 when she became pregnant with Bailey). They lived on Chicago’s South Side with Hoskins’s father, the Rev. Dr. Woodrow Hoskins, respected pastor and noted womanizer. When Bailey was only eight years old, he was sexually abused by a teenage female babysitter and one of her female friends, an incident that went on to influence his relationships with women from that point on.
He decided to go to Howard University on a whim, because that’s where Miss Black Chicago went. He joined the Class of 1992 along with O.J. Simpson’s oldest daughter, Arnelle. Arnelle’s mother is Simpson’s first wife Marguerite Whitley, but when Bailey and Ms. Simpson graduated, Nicole Brown Simpson was there to watch her stepdaughter receive her diploma.
Bailey intended to be a minister like his grandfather, who hoped that Bailey would one day take over his pulpit. Instead Bailey majored in philosophy, which approached religion from a different angle. He met Gus Savage, who invited him to work on the Congressional Black Caucus and knew his grandfather. Bailey would also meetTa-Nahisi Coates, April Silver, Ras Baraka, Jelani Cobb, Melina Reimann-Abdullah, and other luminaries of African-American culture during his years at Howard.
While running for student body president during his senior year, Bailey met Toni Blackman. She helped him come to terms with some of the self-esteem issues that had been plaguing him. Toni told him to love himself, trust his mind, and be deliberate with his words.
Bailey won. Around that same time, he met Deborah Lee (later she changed her first name to Chinaza). He invited Dr. Cornel West to come and speak to the campus. West became one of three mentors. When West transferred from Princeton to Harvard, he took Julius with him; Julius served as West’s teaching assistant in African American Studies courses while Julius was studying philosophy.
At Harvard he met Andre C. Willis and Tricia (Rose) Willis. They helped shape Julius’s understanding of hip hop as an art form.
When Julius’s grandfather began exhibiting signs of dementia, Julius transferred to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to be near his family. West would continue to mentor him to the point that West escorted Sandra Hoskins down the aisle at Julius’s 2004 wedding.
Bailey started teaching at Millikin College. In 1999, he became involved in the case of a short fight during a high school football game in which the Black students were harshly punished with a 2-year suspension even though no one was injured–the so-called “Decatur Seven” case. Rev. Jackson and the Rainbow PUSH Coalition were involved in protests. The State of Illinois had called in the National Guard. Bailey overheard Jackson say that it felt like “Selma all over again.”
Because of his high-status protests of the case, the local Chamber of Commerce essentially forced Millkin College to fire Bailey. The bright side was that his being let go allowed him to be in a relationship with Delores, who had been his student. He married her at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago - the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s church, which the Obamas used to attend.
He got a job at Lewis University in Chicago and served as an administrator of Main Street Church of the Living God with Rev. Thomas E. Walker. But then he feel into a state of depression that ended his marriage and his career at the church. He was technically still married when he fooled around with his 19-year-old assistant Latoria and she became pregnant. Impending parenthood encouraged him to return to teaching in 2007, in Fresco, CA.
His newborn daughter Heather stayed in Decatur but he returned regularly to see her. Then he met Lori Askeland at the Black Atlantic Conference. She set him up with her friend Annette, a single mom with sons, and they moved in together. His daughter moved in when the little girl was six, but the relationship didn’t last.
Bailey came to realize that he craved the approval of the women in his life but resisted their authority, and his responses to those contradictory needs made a healthy relationship impossible. A colleague at a neighboring university whom he wished would become a romantic partner told him he needed professional help. Dr. Molly Clemons helped him see the “plot holes” in his mental script about relationships with women.
With this insight, Dr. Bailey was ready to begin a new chapter of his life. He reconnected with Chinaza, who helped him develop a mature new philosophy about relationships. Sadly, Chinaza passed away right before Christmas 25 of a pulmonary embolism.
Dr. Bailey’s memoir is filled with not only his brilliant psychological insights after looking back at patterns in his life, but also the lyrical language with which he’s able to describe all his experiences, no matter how painful. He’s certainly not as well-known in mainstream American culture as he deserves to be–at least not outside of academic circles–yet it’s impossible to come away from reading the narrative nonfiction of his life story without loving him.
Walt Whitman famously wrote, “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.” Dr. Bailey could easily say the same. He also, finally, loves himself.
Bailey’s memoir is far from a work of dry academic records. In fact, he’s one the most honest, relatable people ever to set down their life stories. In one chapter he writes about the game of bingo as a lifeline, and I couldn’t help but think of Roxane Gay’s entry into the world of competitive Scrabble as she describes it in her collection of essays ‘Bad Feminist.’ Like Gay, Bailey is an African-American intellectual and a person of size in American culture. Like Gay, Bailey has been abused and marginalized by that culture but has survived with passion, wit, humor, and a consummate love for pop culture.
The author of the foreword is noted author and TV personality (currently appearing on OWN) Iyanla Vanzant. Her insight into Dr. Bailey’s book is it explains the work that has to be done for African-American men to be able to do the healing that Vanzant recognizes that they need in their lives. Dr. Bailey fell in love with Vanzant’s goddaughter, the Rev. Chinaza Deborah Lee. Vanzant thinks the important work of healing has much to do with the relationships with women, not only with relationship partners but also with mothers.
Bailey opens his memoir with an anecdote relating to his lover during his college years, Marshonda, a green eyed beauty he nicknamed “Maggie with the cat eyes” because she reminded him of the Tennessee Williams heroine. He was ashamed of his body because of his obesity. Marshonda forced Julius to look in the mirror at himself. She asked him, “Do you dare to love that man?”
Bailey was raised by a single mother, Sandra Hoskins, who was only 15 when she met his 20-year-old father Michael Hill (and 16 when she became pregnant with Bailey). They lived on Chicago’s South Side with Hoskins’s father, the Rev. Dr. Woodrow Hoskins, respected pastor and noted womanizer. When Bailey was only eight years old, he was sexually abused by a teenage female babysitter and one of her female friends, an incident that went on to influence his relationships with women from that point on.
He decided to go to Howard University on a whim, because that’s where Miss Black Chicago went. He joined the Class of 1992 along with O.J. Simpson’s oldest daughter, Arnelle. Arnelle’s mother is Simpson’s first wife Marguerite Whitley, but when Bailey and Ms. Simpson graduated, Nicole Brown Simpson was there to watch her stepdaughter receive her diploma.
Bailey intended to be a minister like his grandfather, who hoped that Bailey would one day take over his pulpit. Instead Bailey majored in philosophy, which approached religion from a different angle. He met Gus Savage, who invited him to work on the Congressional Black Caucus and knew his grandfather. Bailey would also meetTa-Nahisi Coates, April Silver, Ras Baraka, Jelani Cobb, Melina Reimann-Abdullah, and other luminaries of African-American culture during his years at Howard.
While running for student body president during his senior year, Bailey met Toni Blackman. She helped him come to terms with some of the self-esteem issues that had been plaguing him. Toni told him to love himself, trust his mind, and be deliberate with his words.
Bailey won. Around that same time, he met Deborah Lee (later she changed her first name to Chinaza). He invited Dr. Cornel West to come and speak to the campus. West became one of three mentors. When West transferred from Princeton to Harvard, he took Julius with him; Julius served as West’s teaching assistant in African American Studies courses while Julius was studying philosophy.
At Harvard he met Andre C. Willis and Tricia (Rose) Willis. They helped shape Julius’s understanding of hip hop as an art form.
When Julius’s grandfather began exhibiting signs of dementia, Julius transferred to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to be near his family. West would continue to mentor him to the point that West escorted Sandra Hoskins down the aisle at Julius’s 2004 wedding.
Bailey started teaching at Millikin College. In 1999, he became involved in the case of a short fight during a high school football game in which the Black students were harshly punished with a 2-year suspension even though no one was injured–the so-called “Decatur Seven” case. Rev. Jackson and the Rainbow PUSH Coalition were involved in protests. The State of Illinois had called in the National Guard. Bailey overheard Jackson say that it felt like “Selma all over again.”
Because of his high-status protests of the case, the local Chamber of Commerce essentially forced Millkin College to fire Bailey. The bright side was that his being let go allowed him to be in a relationship with Delores, who had been his student. He married her at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago - the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s church, which the Obamas used to attend.
He got a job at Lewis University in Chicago and served as an administrator of Main Street Church of the Living God with Rev. Thomas E. Walker. But then he feel into a state of depression that ended his marriage and his career at the church. He was technically still married when he fooled around with his 19-year-old assistant Latoria and she became pregnant. Impending parenthood encouraged him to return to teaching in 2007, in Fresco, CA.
His newborn daughter Heather stayed in Decatur but he returned regularly to see her. Then he met Lori Askeland at the Black Atlantic Conference. She set him up with her friend Annette, a single mom with sons, and they moved in together. His daughter moved in when the little girl was six, but the relationship didn’t last.
Bailey came to realize that he craved the approval of the women in his life but resisted their authority, and his responses to those contradictory needs made a healthy relationship impossible. A colleague at a neighboring university whom he wished would become a romantic partner told him he needed professional help. Dr. Molly Clemons helped him see the “plot holes” in his mental script about relationships with women.
With this insight, Dr. Bailey was ready to begin a new chapter of his life. He reconnected with Chinaza, who helped him develop a mature new philosophy about relationships. Sadly, Chinaza passed away right before Christmas 25 of a pulmonary embolism.
Dr. Bailey’s memoir is filled with not only his brilliant psychological insights after looking back at patterns in his life, but also the lyrical language with which he’s able to describe all his experiences, no matter how painful. He’s certainly not as well-known in mainstream American culture as he deserves to be–at least not outside of academic circles–yet it’s impossible to come away from reading the narrative nonfiction of his life story without loving him.
Walt Whitman famously wrote, “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.” Dr. Bailey could easily say the same. He also, finally, loves himself.
September 6, 2017
Be-Longing is a fantastic read and eye opener on the truth behind people's personas. Bailey writes this autobiographical piece on his entire life, from childhood to adulthood, expressing his past and the reasons for his choices. As a young African American, Bailey was exposed to abuse, dysfunctional relationships and unhealthy coping mechanisms. Like many others, Bailey began to emulate his distress in behaviors like sex and acting out, resulting in consequences from high schools and his own mother. As Bailey starts college, the reader realizes that he was a product of his environment, and highlights the complex issue of black men in their own neighborhoods. While he was able to meet women and find love, Bailey was also ostracized and considered a "notch" to conquer thanks to his physical appearance, embedding him further into his destructive mindset. What we can learn is that you are able to break this pattern of abuse and negativity, as did he. What I loved about this book is the real world connections to what impacts millions of men, and how they will not discuss what the author has. In Bailey's background, it is unusual and unheard of for black men to speak out on what bothers them and explain their rationale. It's nice to see a refreshing perspective that wants to discuss the problems, and has the experience to defend his position. Thanks to Be-Longing, I am able to remember that everyone in this world is affected and impacted by another action. This book was beautifully written by an articulate, eloquent gentlemen, who was not afraid to reveal the truth behind his mentality and express his opinion on why black men are generalized, and how this should not be the case, thanks to the circumstances many fall into.
November 7, 2017
Read and reviewed for OnlineBookClub. The review can be read for free here: https://forums.onlinebookclub.org/vie...
September 23, 2017
A great master piece for fictional story telling which see, the power of determination triumph agaist all odd, this is one work of Julius bailey that i will rightly recommend any time.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews