Leaving_Marx reviewed Soul on Ice by Eldridge Cleaver
Didn't age to well
2 stars
I wanted to revisit this text because when I first tried reading it 10 years ago I was sidetracked by some of the blatant misogyny of the opening essay and put it down. I figured this time I would finish the book and see which essays had staying power and which were just out of touch, and offer my thoughts on it as a whole.
I will start with the positive and then move on. Cleaver is a decent enough writer when writing from the subjective/experiential vantage point. Apart from the first easy, it is his early prison writings as a Muslim and subsequent atheism that speak strongest. His writing on the conditions of blackness in prison and embracing Islam in incarceration and his love and then rejection of Elijah Muhammad are all interesting subjects he explores.
His strongest essay and most inciteful today is called "Initial Reactions …
I wanted to revisit this text because when I first tried reading it 10 years ago I was sidetracked by some of the blatant misogyny of the opening essay and put it down. I figured this time I would finish the book and see which essays had staying power and which were just out of touch, and offer my thoughts on it as a whole.
I will start with the positive and then move on. Cleaver is a decent enough writer when writing from the subjective/experiential vantage point. Apart from the first easy, it is his early prison writings as a Muslim and subsequent atheism that speak strongest. His writing on the conditions of blackness in prison and embracing Islam in incarceration and his love and then rejection of Elijah Muhammad are all interesting subjects he explores.
His strongest essay and most inciteful today is called "Initial Reactions to the Assassination of Malcolm X". The perspective of how Malcolm's death effected Muslim and black prisoners inside and the perspectives on the turning point for a black Liberation and Nationalism perspective paint a compelling picture of this moment in time.
But overall this books conservative, misogynist perspectives on alpha masculinity, black masculinity and women, and homosexuality feel closer to Andrew Tate today than a liberatory perspective. There has been many black feminists and radicals who've addressed this, so I wont explain it pass not worth the read, there isn't much there except bad takes. Even his love letters he includes to his lawyer, are corny and self-important and don't belong in the collection.
As a fan of James Baldwins writings, it felt his essay critiquing him to be an especially bad take. Falling short of meaningful engaging with Baldwins writing - of which cleaver clearly enjoys in spite of his homosexuality - the essay attacks him in petty and homophobic ways in defense of the white beat author Norman Mailer.
All in all, Cleaver is a weird guy. Starting off as a politicized prisoner, before being canonized and elevated to positions of power in the BPP, fleeing the US and winding up a washed up Republican Morman on his death bed. He has lived a variety of atheist and theological extremities, passionate in his convictions at any one time, but swayed quickly from one path to another. I don't think there are many out there of the right or left who today would claim him as their own.