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remigves's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
4.0
charity_royall_331's review against another edition
4.0
We are poorer as a society for having lost James Baldwin's eloquent and insightful voice on race and American culture.
mckatkat's review
5.0
I picked up this book on a whim in the late morning, and finished it before dinner. I've only read a couple of James Baldwin essays before, so I'm sure most of what I just experienced was just the impact of his writing in general, but this is an incredible, and hard to describe, work.
It's not "organized" but it follows a logic- it's like when someone asks a question and doesn't believe the answer they've given, so they have to examine why someone would answer it that way and why they don't believe the answer and ultimately, if the "real" answer being known is even the point once you've gone down the path of the "why." This isn't a true crime book, this is a man trying to understand how he feels about a single fact of a crime.
Specifically the crime here is the Atlanta Child Murders, and Baldwin is trying to understand how the conviction of Wayne Williams for the murders of two adults also deemed him guilty of the murders of twenty eight children. If you're not from Atlanta or not familiar with the case, this won't really teach you about the concrete facts of either, because it's about how that one answer that ended the case made James Baldwin think about race, society, capitalism, history, and philosophy. I'm from Atlanta and know the case, so if you're not, I genuinely don't know if you need to learn a bit before going in. Also, because of that I don't know if this is a great book, or just a work by James Baldwin that happens to be a bit more personal to me.
Absolutely amazed.
It's not "organized" but it follows a logic- it's like when someone asks a question and doesn't believe the answer they've given, so they have to examine why someone would answer it that way and why they don't believe the answer and ultimately, if the "real" answer being known is even the point once you've gone down the path of the "why." This isn't a true crime book, this is a man trying to understand how he feels about a single fact of a crime.
Specifically the crime here is the Atlanta Child Murders, and Baldwin is trying to understand how the conviction of Wayne Williams for the murders of two adults also deemed him guilty of the murders of twenty eight children. If you're not from Atlanta or not familiar with the case, this won't really teach you about the concrete facts of either, because it's about how that one answer that ended the case made James Baldwin think about race, society, capitalism, history, and philosophy. I'm from Atlanta and know the case, so if you're not, I genuinely don't know if you need to learn a bit before going in. Also, because of that I don't know if this is a great book, or just a work by James Baldwin that happens to be a bit more personal to me.
Absolutely amazed.
jds70's review
2.0
Another reviewer said this isn't the best introduction to James Baldwin. I think they were right. I've never read James Baldwin before. I think I need to read something else to introduce myself to his writing
The blurb is a bit misleading. I was expecting a true crime investigation, a la Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. It wasn't. It's essentially an essay of his (justified) anger regarding the case, & railing (understandably) against the history of racism in America. I'm not saying that's bad, I'm just saying it's not really what I wanted.
What I wanted was to learn about the case. I wanted pictures of the victims; to know who they were. I wanted to learn about the man convicted, not of killing the children, but of killing two adult men, & was assumed to have murdered the children as well, although he was never charged with the child murders. I wanted to know about the authorities involved in the case. Baldwin talks about the FBI's discovery of a pattern, but never mentions exactly what that pattern is. The children were killed in multiple ways. If that's the "pattern" he refers to, it's not a pattern, which begs the question, What makes the FBI think there's a pattern? Baldwin mentions interviewing people involved in the case, but we never learn what was said. Was the KKK involved? Was there a cover-up of some sort? Was Wayne Williams scapegoated &/or railroaded? I think the answer to all three questions is "yes" but I don't know for sure because these theories are briefly mentioned, but never explored. Balwin mentions several times that he is intentionally being vague, & it drove me nuts!
At the time James Baldwin wrote The Evidence of Things Not Seen, the case was only a few years old, so it was fresh in most people's mind. It happened forty years ago. I'm not old enough to remember the Atlanta child murders. I would've liked to know more about the injustice that Wayne Williams has endured, & that the loved ones of the dead children have endured. I wanted to learn about the case.
It just wasn't what I expected, & I didn't learn what I wanted to learn about the case. Sorry Mr. Baldwin. I'll try something else you wrote.
The blurb is a bit misleading. I was expecting a true crime investigation, a la Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. It wasn't. It's essentially an essay of his (justified) anger regarding the case, & railing (understandably) against the history of racism in America. I'm not saying that's bad, I'm just saying it's not really what I wanted.
What I wanted was to learn about the case. I wanted pictures of the victims; to know who they were. I wanted to learn about the man convicted, not of killing the children, but of killing two adult men, & was assumed to have murdered the children as well, although he was never charged with the child murders. I wanted to know about the authorities involved in the case. Baldwin talks about the FBI's discovery of a pattern, but never mentions exactly what that pattern is. The children were killed in multiple ways. If that's the "pattern" he refers to, it's not a pattern, which begs the question, What makes the FBI think there's a pattern? Baldwin mentions interviewing people involved in the case, but we never learn what was said. Was the KKK involved? Was there a cover-up of some sort? Was Wayne Williams scapegoated &/or railroaded? I think the answer to all three questions is "yes" but I don't know for sure because these theories are briefly mentioned, but never explored. Balwin mentions several times that he is intentionally being vague, & it drove me nuts!
At the time James Baldwin wrote The Evidence of Things Not Seen, the case was only a few years old, so it was fresh in most people's mind. It happened forty years ago. I'm not old enough to remember the Atlanta child murders. I would've liked to know more about the injustice that Wayne Williams has endured, & that the loved ones of the dead children have endured. I wanted to learn about the case.
It just wasn't what I expected, & I didn't learn what I wanted to learn about the case. Sorry Mr. Baldwin. I'll try something else you wrote.
buildingtaste's review against another edition
challenging
dark
tense
slow-paced
4.0
Not sure what I was expecting. The prose is excellent.
amandaaurigemma's review
5.0
Memorable Quotes:
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It has something to do, in my own case, with having once been a Black child in a White country. My memory stammers: but my soul is a witness.
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If women dream less than men - for men know very little about a woman's dreams - it is certainly because they are so swiftly confronted with the reality of men.
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White Americans, however, bless their generous little hearts, are quite unable to imagine that there can be anyone, anywhere, who does not wish to be White, and are probably the most abject victims of history the world has ever seen, or will ever know [...] The Americans decided that desegregation meant integration, and, with this one word, smashed every Black institution in this country
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Integration was never considered a two-way street. Blacks went downtown, but Whites did not come uptown.
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Wealth is not the same thing as affluence. Wealth, that is, is not the power to buy, but the power to dictate the terms of that so magical marketplace - or, at the very least, to influence those terms. Wealth is the power to influence or to change the city's zoning laws or the insurance rates or the actuarial tables they apply to Blacks or the textbook industry or the father-to-son labor unions or the composition of the grand juries and the boards of education. Wealth is the power to make one's needs felt and to force a response to those needs.
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But the boy was Black and so they had to kill him - of course.
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The world's definitions are one thing and the life one actually lives is quite another.
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Or, in other words, although White people don't wish to be White, it is very important for White people that Black people should wish to be White.