Black Like Mao: Red China and Black Revolution

by Robin D.G. Kelley, Betsy Esche

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/ccbh/souls...

Genres: China, History, Politics, Race

58 pages, ebook

Published January 1, 1999

About the author

Robin Davis Gibran Kelley is an American historian and academic, who is the Gary B. Nash Professor of American History at UCLA.

Reviews

[Rolin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This work is in a larger anthology of essays called AfroAsia by Fred Ho and Bill Mullen. Robin D.G. Kelley and Betsy Esch present this essay as an introduction to establishing the intellectual (and aesthetic) ties between Maoism and various strains of Black radicalism and nationalism in the mid 20th century. Primarily, Kelley and Esch argue that Mao's revolution in China presented a "colored" version of Marxism that challenges white and Western models of class struggle and thus made it appealing to Black radicals.

That claim is pretty straightforward to make when you have figures like WEB DuBois, Huey Newton Robert F. Williams actually visiting Mao in China and keeping Little Red Books. The work takes an interesting turn into different ruptures in Black radical thought regarding the role that nationalism should play, discussed in the context of RAM (Revolutionary Action Movement). It would have been interesting to see how maoism shaped and guided these disagreements.

Overall, this work was interesting, though a bit too surface-level as it bounced around from DuBois to Black Panthers to RAM to the literary works of Baraka. The chapter in Julia Lovell's Maoism: A Global History in American interpretations of maoism would complement this work very well.

[Mariam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anything Robin D. G. Kelley is a delightful experience.

A free pdf copy of Kelly's (and Betsy Esche's) revolutionary genius:
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/ccbh/souls...