NONFICTION - June 12, 1994

DAUGHTERS: On Family and Fatherhood by Gerald Early (Addison-Wesley: $17; 256 pp.) This book is not about race, Gerald Early protests loudly and often. Page 145, definition of blackness: “Blackness is not an Afrocentric lesson, nor a coming together of the tribe in a fake unity. It is this: a fatalistic, realistic belief in human transcendence, born in the consciousness of a people who experienced the gut-wrenching harshness of slavery.” It’s not about race, he says as he describes his feelings about his daughter’s potentially dating white boys. It’s not about race, he says as he describes the importance of the civil rights movement to his kids. It’s not about race, he wants to say when the policemen stop him for taking a walk outside the building in which his wife Ida is attending a Junior League meeting in their university town. “I’m tired,” says his youngest daughter Rosalind at this point, “of hearing about race.” In fairness, this book is not all about race. Much of it is about how Early came to terms with his eldest daughter’s early learning disabilities and “how the members of a family come to believe in each other.” At one point Linnet, the eldest, makes fun of her father: “Another wonderful tale,” she describes one of the fables of Early’s childhood (which always involve books and hard work), “about growing up black and living in the city.” “I think shame often winds up being expressed in people as odd forms of strength or excessive pride,” Early writes. The idea that this gentle, thoughtful man has been made to feel less than he is in itself constitutes an indictment of racism. We are given the unique privilege, here, of watching him come to terms with both race and family. If Gerald Early, try as he might, can’t escape race, his daughters can and will, even as they watch their father struggle with it.