Blackness Undefined: Toure talks his New Book on Post-Blackness and What It Means to Be Black Now

I have always been a VH1, MTV, BET, junkie. I used to get my fix from programs like MTV Diary, VH1 storytellers, and Rap City, whose basement freestyles with Big Tigger always gave my inspiration fodder. I craved anything that could give more insight into the process behind the product. I imagined myself backstage with the artists, holding my tape recorder to their stories, dreaming of myself on Oprah. She'd ask me to recount my rendezvous with Mariah at the Ritz, and marvel at our chummy connection marked by our laughs and lip-stick covered glasses of Moet. Then, she'd introduce me as the writer who's able  to capture the artists' energy and emotion unlike any other writer. So when, Toure, a music journalist, novelist, tv personality, and essayist,  someone who I've admired since my high school days for his similar background and upbringing, came out with his new book, I indulged, and was rejuvenated in new ways.


The book, Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness: What it Means to Be Black Now is a necessary and relevant addition to the conversation on identity formation for Black Americans. Just as Toni Morrison notes the complexity of race as it pertains the Black writer in her essay "Home", Toure notes the complexity of race as it pertains to Blacks in this post-civil rights, Obama era. While Morrison pushes to create a space where we can articulate race free from "deceit, blindness, ignorance, paralysis, and sheer malevolence," so that "different types of perception [are] not only available but [...] inevitable," Toure offers the notion that Blacks must exist beyond previous boxed definitions. So long to the idea that Blacks can't speak articulately and  grow up in the hood. Goodbye to the idea that authentic Black means loud, violent,  and drug dealer. I'm happy for this book because it screams out: Blacks are a heterogeneous, diverse group.  As Henry Gates Jr. insists, if there are 40 million Blacks, then there are 40 million ways to be Black. Similarly, the artist William Pope adds,"'Blackness is limited only by the courage to imagine it differently.'" In the book's dedication, Toure pulls at my most sensitive and internalized experiences by dedicating "it to everyone who was ever made to feel 'not Black enough.' Whatever that means."

Thanks Toure; I enjoyed every bit of it.


Here, he reads excerpts and chats it up on Media Beat: