Michael Eric Dyson – författare

A former welfare father from the ghetto of Detroit, Michael Eric Dyson is today a critic, scholar, and ordained Baptist minister who has forged a unique role: he is a compelling spokesman for the concerns of the black community, and also a leader who has a genuine rapport with that community, particularly with urban youth. In his essays, lectures, sermons, and books, he has emerged as one of the leading African-American voices of our day.Dyson's passion for contemporary black culture informs Between God and Gangsta' Rap, his latest foray into the ongoing debate about African-American identity which embraces the hopes of the church and the cool reality of hip-hop. Bringing together writings on music, religion, politics, and identity, and offering a multi-faceted view of black life, the book charts the progress of Dyson's own soul, from his roots in the Detroit ghetto, to his current status as a Baptist minister, professor, cultural critic, husband, and father. Dyson opens with a letter to his brother, who is serving life in prison on a murder charge. This painful piece reveals a violence in the author's own family that sets the tone for themes that will emerge throughout these writings: violence on the black body and soul; the redemptive power of hope through school, church, and family; sexuality as a source of anguish and of joy; and the struggle with entrenched white racism. There is a section of wonderful profiles Dyson calls "Testimonials"--studies of black men, from O.J. Simpson to Marion Barry, and from Baptist preacher Gardner Taylor to Michael Jordan and Sam Cooke. In "Obsessed with O.J.," Dyson offers an extremely personal and insightful series of reflections on the case. In "Lessons," Dyson takes up the subjects of politics and racial identity. Newt Gingrich and moral panic, Quabiliah Shabazz, Carol Moseley Braun, the NAACP, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X all figure in these insightful and accessible pieces. And "Songs of Celebration" draws from Dyson's writings for the popular press such as Rolling Stone and Vibe, and explores the joys and pitfalls of black expression, from the black vernacular bible to gospel music, R & B, and hip-hop. Dyson concludes with an essay framed as a letter to his wife, which offers a positive counterbalance to the opening address to his brother. The letter serves as a tribute to the redemptive powers of love, the black family, spirit, and change.Arguing that the richness of black culture today can be found in the interstices--between god and gangsta' rap--Dyson charts the progress and pain of African Americans over the past decade, showing that brilliance and beauty, pain and drudgery are components of this changing culture. As a compendium of his thinking about contemporary culture Between God and Gangsta' Rap will find a wide audience among black and white readers.

"Pride goeth before destruction, a hoaughty spirit before a mighty fall." As the biblical fall of Satan suggests, pride as a defining symptom of self-preoccupation follows a paradoxical route at which end lies self-destruction. Dyson explores the fate of pride from Christian theology to the social responsibilities of self-regard and regard for the society as a whole. Pride is also vain glory, or the inordinate obsession with one's existence, body and intellect, which becomes the playground for human vanity. Dyson examines how pride, within black communities, becomes a necessary and ironic defense against a culture that at once formally rejected it in their vreligious beliefs but embraced it in their social realtions. As a result, blacks were ensconced, implicated, even embroiled, in the West's schizophrenic views of the deadly sin. Dyson will explore all these moments of pride, attempting to probe the contradictory facets of a vice that in some instances became a celebrated virtue, and a virtue among some cultures that ultimately became a vice.

From rap music to preaching, from Toni Morrison to Leonard Jeffries, from Michael Jackson to Michael Jordan, Reflecting Black explores as never before the varied and complex dimensions of African-American culture through personal reflection, expository journalism, scholarly investigation and even homily."A landmark text in Afro-American cultural criticism. There is simply nothing like it that exists. The level of theoretical sophistication and political engagement is rare-and badly needed." -Cornel West"As Reflecting Black so richly demonstrates, Michael Eric Dyson combines cutting-edge theoretical acuity with the passionate, engaged, and accessible stance of a public intellectual. His critical purview encompasses scholarly tomes and mass market periodicals, trends in theology and in hip-hop culture alike. This book is a splendid introduction to a singularly important voice." -Henry Louis Gates, Jr."Dyson is a young black cultural, political and religious critic whose new book directs its nastiest commentary at racism, sexism, capitalism and straight-up immorality. His is a fresh voice seemingly unfazed by Blackademe's battle royal. Dyson's project is very much in the tradition of recent work by a number of young African-American cultural critics like Tricia Rose, Hilton Als, bell hooks, Greg Tate, Wahneema Lubiano, Elizabeth Alexander and Herman Gray, to name but a few. Reflecting Black is much more than a cultural critique in the formal sense. It interrogates the political, social and moral crises confronting American society generally and African-American communities in particular. In the end, Dyson is not one of those cultural studies scholars concerned with debating the fine points of discourse theory. He is an 'oppositional' critic with a much higher purpose than developing analytical tools to make sense of African-American culture. The Reverend Dyson is not only operating within a rich Marxist tradition but within a very old and continuing African-American tradition. Black communities, through newspaper columns, church groups, street corner gatherings, beauty parlor and barber shop discussions, have always debated and taken responsibility for their culture(s). Dyson's constant lecturing, chiding and encouraging embodies what Antonio Gramsci and his own mama expected us to do all along: not just interpret culture but actively change it--through struggle." -The Nation"Where Michael Jackson meets spirituality, where Martin Luther King meets Malcolm X, where the consolidating 'narrative of racial unity' meets the 'perplexing and chaotic politics of racial identity': These are the border zones of Michael Eric Dyson's compassionate, postmodern, eclectic critical project. Reflecting Black is an invigorating reader for our perplexing and chaotic times." -Voice Literary Supplement"He shows an admirable breadth, ranging from issues such as racism and political correctness in the seminary to examinations of such icons of popular culture as filmaker Spike Lee, singer Michael Jackson and athlete Michael Jordan. One entire section of the book is devoted to black religion, and includes an examination of the lives and examples of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcom X." -Washington Post Book World"Yet, if Dyson stumbles in his discussions of black popular culture, he soars in his section titled 'Beyond the Mantra: Reflections on Race, Gender, and Class.' In 'Remembering Emmett Till,' Dyson writes not just with his mind, but with his heart." -Boston Globe"Yet his insights are just as often incisive and challenging, and they demand serious consideration. By insisting that we acknowledge the complexities of race in America and by refusing to accept easy answers, Reflecting Black forces us to think harder about how we can create alterna

"Dyson's incisive analysis of JAY-Z's brilliance not only offers a brief history of hip-hop's critical place in American culture, but also hints at how we can best move forward." --QuestloveJAY-Z: Made in America is the fruit of Michael Eric Dyson's decade of teaching the work of one of the greatest poets this nation has produced, as gifted a wordsmith as Walt Whitman, Robert Frost and Rita Dove. But as a rapper, he's sometimes not given the credit he deserves for just how great an artist he's been for so long. This book wrestles with the biggest themes of JAY-Z's career, including hustling, and it recognizes the way that he's always weaved politics into his music, making important statements about race, criminal justice, black wealth and social injustice. As he enters his fifties, and to mark his thirty years as a recording artist, this is the perfect time to take a look at JAY-Z's career and his role in making this nation what it is today. In many ways, this is JAY-Z's America as much as it's Pelosi's America, or Trump's America, or Martin Luther King's America. JAY-Z has given this country a language to think with and words to live by.

The night of May 25, 2020 changed America. George Floyd, a 43-year-old Black man, was killed during an arrest in Minneapolis when a white cop suffocated him. The video of that night’s events went viral, sparking the largest protests in the nation’s history and the sort of social unrest we have not seen since the sixties. While Floyd’s death was certainly the catalyst, (heightened by the fact that it occurred during a pandemic whose victims were disproportionately of color) it was in truth the fuse that lit an ever-filling powder keg.Long Time Coming grapples with the cultural and social forces that have shaped our nation in the brutal crucible of race. In five beautifully argued chapters - each addressed to a black martyr from Breonna Taylor to Rev. Clementa Pinckney - Dyson traces the genealogy of anti-blackness from the slave ship to the street corner where Floyd lost his life - and where America gained its will to confront the ugly truth of systemic racism. Ending with a poignant plea for hope, Dyson’s exciting new book points the way to social redemption.

An electrifying and traumatic encounter in the sixties crystallised the fraught conflict between conscience and politics – between morality and power – in addressing race. In 1963 Attorney General Robert Kennedy sought out James Baldwin to explain the rage that threatened to engulf black America. Baldwin brought along some friends, including playwright Lorraine Hansberry, psychologist Kenneth Clark, and a valiant activist, Jerome Smith.Kennedy walked away from the nearly three-hour meeting angry – that the black folk assembled didn’t understand politics, and that they weren’t as easy to talk to as Martin Luther King. But especially that they were more interested in witness than policy. But Kennedy’s anger quickly gave way to empathy, especially for Smith. “I guess if I were in his shoes…I might feel differently about this country.” Kennedy set about changing policy – the meeting having transformed his thinking in fundamental ways.Every big argument about race that persists to this day got a hearing in that room. And we grapple still with the responsibility of black intellectuals and artists to bring about social change. This book exists at the tense intersection of the conflict between politics and prophecy – of whether we embrace political resolution or moral redemption to fix our fractured racial landscape.