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Soul on Ice
The now-classic memoir that shocked, outraged, and ultimately changed the way the United States looked at the civil rights movement and the black experience.
By turns shocking and lyrical, unblinking and raw, the searingly honest memoirs of Eldridge Cleaver are a testament to his unique place in American history. Cleaver writes in Soul on Ice, "I'm perfectly aware that I'm in prison, that I'm a Negro, that I've been a rapist, and that I have a Higher Uneducation." What Cleaver shows us, on the pages of this now classic autobiography, is how much he was a man.
By turns shocking and lyrical, unblinking and raw, the searingly honest memoirs of Eldridge Cleaver are a testament to his unique place in American history. Cleaver writes in Soul on Ice, "I'm perfectly aware that I'm in prison, that I'm a Negro, that I've been a rapist, and that I have a Higher Uneducation." What Cleaver shows us, on the pages of this now classic autobiography, is how much he was a man.
242 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1968
About the author
Eldridge Cleaver
43 books136 followersLeroy Eldridge Cleaver, better known as Eldridge Cleaver, was a writer and political activist who became an early leader of the Black Panther Party.
In 1958 he was put in jail for rape. There he was given a copy of The Communist Manifesto. When he got released he joined the Black Panther Party. He then joined the Oakland-based Black Panther Party, serving as Minister of Information, or spokesperson.
His book Soul On Ice is a collection of essays. In the most controversial part of the book, Cleaver acknowledges committing acts of rape, stating that he initially raped black women in the ghetto "for practice" and then embarked on the serial rape of white women. He described these crimes as politically inspired.
Later in life he converted to Mormonism.
In 1958 he was put in jail for rape. There he was given a copy of The Communist Manifesto. When he got released he joined the Black Panther Party. He then joined the Oakland-based Black Panther Party, serving as Minister of Information, or spokesperson.
His book Soul On Ice is a collection of essays. In the most controversial part of the book, Cleaver acknowledges committing acts of rape, stating that he initially raped black women in the ghetto "for practice" and then embarked on the serial rape of white women. He described these crimes as politically inspired.
Later in life he converted to Mormonism.
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August 19, 2013
This book is one of the several books I planned on reading to help fill in some of the woeful gaps in my knowledge of the Civil Rights movement. I now know more about Eldridge Cleaver through his collection of short essays, covering diverse topics such as Muhammed Ali, Malcolm X, the sexual politics of race, war and politics, from Soul on Ice.
Cleaver’s writing is extremely infuriating yet it’s hard to stop reading. Cleaver’s views are so old-fashioned, homophobic, and misogynistic and, at times, slightly crazy, but it’s impossible to ignore his masterful use of the language, as well as his unique vantage point of the American race crisis. And you know it’s important to read this book as Cleaver was such a pivotal player in the Civil Rights movement.
The first couple of essays absolutely shocked me. Cleaver is very candid about the rapes he “practiced” (that was the expression he used) on black women in order to ultimately rape white women, an act which he saw as being revolutionary. However, the language he uses in this section isn’t one of a lunatic but one of an eloquent man, which is disturbing in itself.
Cleaver's prison essays were the most poignant to me, as were his analyses of the living situation of blacks in America:
“Individuality is not nourished in prison, neither by the officials nor by the convicts. It is a deep hole out of which to climb.”
About American ghettos he says “In this huge cauldron, inestimable natural gifts, wisdom, love, music, science, poetry are stamped down and left to boil with the dregs of an elementally corrupted nature, and thousands upon thousands of souls are destroyed by vice and misery and degradation, obliterated, wiped out, washed from the register of the living, dehumanized.”
The book also includes some love letters he wrote to his lawyer, a woman who represented several of the Black Panthers. The inclusion of these letters seemed so surreal to me, yet they appear to have been very heartfelt.
I was definitely disgusted by Cleaver’s homophobia; for one thing he equated homosexuality to child-rape, which is ridiculous. And his lambasting of James Baldwin, one of my favourite writers, was harsh and uncalled for. He believed that Baldwin’s homosexuality made him less of a man. Additionally he believed that Baldwin was a sort of “Uncle Tom” figure who hated his own people. Judging from those sentiments and more, it doesn’t look as if he understood much of Baldwin’s work.
As Ishmael Reed said in the introduction, Cleaver is an “ ’outside’ critic who takes pleasure in dissecting the deepest and most cherished notions of our personal and social behaviour; and it takes a certain amount of courage and a ‘willed objectivity’ to read him." I completely agree with this statement.
Cleaver’s writing is extremely infuriating yet it’s hard to stop reading. Cleaver’s views are so old-fashioned, homophobic, and misogynistic and, at times, slightly crazy, but it’s impossible to ignore his masterful use of the language, as well as his unique vantage point of the American race crisis. And you know it’s important to read this book as Cleaver was such a pivotal player in the Civil Rights movement.
The first couple of essays absolutely shocked me. Cleaver is very candid about the rapes he “practiced” (that was the expression he used) on black women in order to ultimately rape white women, an act which he saw as being revolutionary. However, the language he uses in this section isn’t one of a lunatic but one of an eloquent man, which is disturbing in itself.
Cleaver's prison essays were the most poignant to me, as were his analyses of the living situation of blacks in America:
“Individuality is not nourished in prison, neither by the officials nor by the convicts. It is a deep hole out of which to climb.”
About American ghettos he says “In this huge cauldron, inestimable natural gifts, wisdom, love, music, science, poetry are stamped down and left to boil with the dregs of an elementally corrupted nature, and thousands upon thousands of souls are destroyed by vice and misery and degradation, obliterated, wiped out, washed from the register of the living, dehumanized.”
The book also includes some love letters he wrote to his lawyer, a woman who represented several of the Black Panthers. The inclusion of these letters seemed so surreal to me, yet they appear to have been very heartfelt.
I was definitely disgusted by Cleaver’s homophobia; for one thing he equated homosexuality to child-rape, which is ridiculous. And his lambasting of James Baldwin, one of my favourite writers, was harsh and uncalled for. He believed that Baldwin’s homosexuality made him less of a man. Additionally he believed that Baldwin was a sort of “Uncle Tom” figure who hated his own people. Judging from those sentiments and more, it doesn’t look as if he understood much of Baldwin’s work.
As Ishmael Reed said in the introduction, Cleaver is an “ ’outside’ critic who takes pleasure in dissecting the deepest and most cherished notions of our personal and social behaviour; and it takes a certain amount of courage and a ‘willed objectivity’ to read him." I completely agree with this statement.
December 29, 2008
Eldridge Cleaver, aside from being Minister of Information for the Black Panthers, was one of the world's true fucking freaks. A serial rapist and homophobe--"homosexuality is a disease, like baby rape or the deisire to be president of General Motors"--he also happens to be freakishly brilliant. He also seems to be one of those rare few who, forced by some explosive admixture of clarity, feeling, and a bizarre kind of honor, live out in their bodies the physical logic of their ideas.
If the 60s utopianism of the middle passages give you pause, the last three or four pieces in this book will make you gag on what you thought you knew about blackness in America. He is in love with his (white?) lawyer and possibly Norman Mailer and the Beatles. He glorifies black masculinity while excoriating the "epicene" whites who have forced its creation through slavery and the relinquishment of their own. He theoretically conflates (American) blackness, Masculinity, heterosexuality, the (fecund, potent) body, and menial work. He dichotomizes these in constellation, against whiteness, femininity, homosexuality, the (sterile, impotent) mind, and administration.
He expostulates on the twist (the dance) as a revolutionary movement reconnecting white people ("Omnipotent Administrators" and "Ultrafeminines") to the bodies they have been alienated from by delegating their masculinity to the black "Supermasculine Menials beneath them."
The book is made of actual love letters, allegory, high crystalline theory, slang, rantings, epithets, enumerations, and memoir.
His several styles and odd statements may be contradictory. He makes no attempt to reconcile them and even though this isn't an autobiography (as billed), it becomes a self-portrait of incredible clarity for that simple fact.
But one of the most interesting things about this book is that Cleaver's blackness has inspired in him a sort of Cartesian project--the rejection of all received (white) truth, beauty, and goodness, and a fundamental reevaluation of the world and its lies. (The difference here being that there is no Cartesian boot-licking.) The outcome is startling and incredibly strange, because unlike Descartes, Cleaver doesn't mince lucidly back to the given world to certify its corruptions. This because he's actually rejected it. Cogito Ergo I'm gonna fuckshitup.
This is truly an outsider work, in the art-world sense of the designation. As with all such artists (Henry Darger for instance) appreciation of Cleaver is deeply complicated. It doesn't do to simply exoticize the incredible otherness of his worldview and tour it as a sort of bizarro psychic theme park; neither does it do to simply agree with it. With these disbarred, it's hard to see what is left for a reader. But something happens to a person when reading this stuff. Its alien extremity knocks the crap and dust, the unnecessary, from our ideas with a beating of contrasts, a battery of possible obscene alternatives.
Furthermore his neuroses correspond to the counter-reading Keith McNeal has given the term. They are psychic reaction-formations to stressors which may enable a management of those stressors. That is say, they have content. This content illuminates the black struggle and the struggles of robbed and used people for personhood more than anything else I've ever read. (I haven't read a lot of this stuff). I also think it is sometimes beautiful in its necessity.
"All the gods are dead save the god of war."
"We shall have our manhood. We shall have it or the earth will be leveled by our attempts to gain it"
-Eldridge Cleaver
If the 60s utopianism of the middle passages give you pause, the last three or four pieces in this book will make you gag on what you thought you knew about blackness in America. He is in love with his (white?) lawyer and possibly Norman Mailer and the Beatles. He glorifies black masculinity while excoriating the "epicene" whites who have forced its creation through slavery and the relinquishment of their own. He theoretically conflates (American) blackness, Masculinity, heterosexuality, the (fecund, potent) body, and menial work. He dichotomizes these in constellation, against whiteness, femininity, homosexuality, the (sterile, impotent) mind, and administration.
He expostulates on the twist (the dance) as a revolutionary movement reconnecting white people ("Omnipotent Administrators" and "Ultrafeminines") to the bodies they have been alienated from by delegating their masculinity to the black "Supermasculine Menials beneath them."
The book is made of actual love letters, allegory, high crystalline theory, slang, rantings, epithets, enumerations, and memoir.
His several styles and odd statements may be contradictory. He makes no attempt to reconcile them and even though this isn't an autobiography (as billed), it becomes a self-portrait of incredible clarity for that simple fact.
But one of the most interesting things about this book is that Cleaver's blackness has inspired in him a sort of Cartesian project--the rejection of all received (white) truth, beauty, and goodness, and a fundamental reevaluation of the world and its lies. (The difference here being that there is no Cartesian boot-licking.) The outcome is startling and incredibly strange, because unlike Descartes, Cleaver doesn't mince lucidly back to the given world to certify its corruptions. This because he's actually rejected it. Cogito Ergo I'm gonna fuckshitup.
This is truly an outsider work, in the art-world sense of the designation. As with all such artists (Henry Darger for instance) appreciation of Cleaver is deeply complicated. It doesn't do to simply exoticize the incredible otherness of his worldview and tour it as a sort of bizarro psychic theme park; neither does it do to simply agree with it. With these disbarred, it's hard to see what is left for a reader. But something happens to a person when reading this stuff. Its alien extremity knocks the crap and dust, the unnecessary, from our ideas with a beating of contrasts, a battery of possible obscene alternatives.
Furthermore his neuroses correspond to the counter-reading Keith McNeal has given the term. They are psychic reaction-formations to stressors which may enable a management of those stressors. That is say, they have content. This content illuminates the black struggle and the struggles of robbed and used people for personhood more than anything else I've ever read. (I haven't read a lot of this stuff). I also think it is sometimes beautiful in its necessity.
"All the gods are dead save the god of war."
"We shall have our manhood. We shall have it or the earth will be leveled by our attempts to gain it"
-Eldridge Cleaver
August 10, 2008
Let me begin by saying that when I read this book, I was very young. A lot of what I learned with this reading, was admittedly violent and based in misogyny. But everything I learned here was so different from anything my parents, church, and school taught that it sent me looking into all kinds of other "missions".
As a result of reading this book, I have also read THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X, MEIN KAMPF, WHY DO WHITE GUYS HAVE ALL THE FUN, THE CLANSMAN, and THE LEOPARD'S SPOTS (to name a few). Each of these books had a lesson (not going to say wherther it was good or bad, right or wrong, negative or positive).
Overall, having begun with SOUL ON ICE, I was impelled to toward a moral and intellectual journey. Subsequently, I think I have developed into a far better person, in part due to the my response to this book -- though the book itself is not a fabulous reading experience.
As a result of reading this book, I have also read THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X, MEIN KAMPF, WHY DO WHITE GUYS HAVE ALL THE FUN, THE CLANSMAN, and THE LEOPARD'S SPOTS (to name a few). Each of these books had a lesson (not going to say wherther it was good or bad, right or wrong, negative or positive).
Overall, having begun with SOUL ON ICE, I was impelled to toward a moral and intellectual journey. Subsequently, I think I have developed into a far better person, in part due to the my response to this book -- though the book itself is not a fabulous reading experience.
December 9, 2023
This book has been on my 'to read' list for years. While I do not agree with everything Eldridge Cleaver has to say I do believe that much of what he says is true: the 'identity' of African American men has been defined by the dominant culture - even as the 'soul' has been stripped away. This can best be understood by what Frantz Fanon defined as 'The Fact of Blackness' - Eldridge Cleaver points out that this 'fact' is often a narrative that is (ultimately) ego-dystonic; forcing definitions on the individual that are both oppressive and destructive. Highest recommendation.
January 6, 2016
I really should give this revolting book this book five stars, instead of one, in recognition of the fact that it demonstrated what idiocy I am capable of. I belong in other words to the generation that read this book, recommended it highly to everyone for two years and spent the next forty years being highly embarrassed about having done so.
Eldridge Cleaver was a serial rapist who said he enjoyed committing the act more with white women than black. He was also a homophobe and an advocate of violent revolution. He was the darling of the radicals of my generation who were so desperate to establish their credentials as being opposed to racism, nuclear weapons, the Viet Nam war, the consumer society and the establishment that they would endorse any lunatic position, writer, doctrine or politician.. We were led by our good intentions to admire not only Cleaver but also Ho Chi Minh, Mao Tse Tung, Che Guevara and others. Read this book which was greatly lionized in its time to understand the extent to which my generation went off half-cocked.
Eldridge Cleaver was a serial rapist who said he enjoyed committing the act more with white women than black. He was also a homophobe and an advocate of violent revolution. He was the darling of the radicals of my generation who were so desperate to establish their credentials as being opposed to racism, nuclear weapons, the Viet Nam war, the consumer society and the establishment that they would endorse any lunatic position, writer, doctrine or politician.. We were led by our good intentions to admire not only Cleaver but also Ho Chi Minh, Mao Tse Tung, Che Guevara and others. Read this book which was greatly lionized in its time to understand the extent to which my generation went off half-cocked.
December 13, 2008
This is absolutely one of the the most overrated books of all time. Soul on Ice is a collection of outdated essays, along with a few love letters to his attorney written while Cleaver was serving time for being a serial rapist. Cleaver shows a poor understanding of the political workings of the elites, the reasons why many middle and working class whites are "racists", and virtually every other thing he opens his mouth on with one major exception. His observations about the disturbing mental and sexual pathologies that exist in the American black males mind towards white females are very insightful and realistic. At one point Cleaver actually says that his whole motivation for raping white women was that he considered it a "revolutionary act", it was his way of striking back at "white" society. He also goes into blacks pursuance of white females having more to do with black self hatred more than anything else. Although I think the general pathology black males have towards white females has evolved into something slightly different now, given the system now approves of and out and out promotes relationships between black males and white females, this book is still brilliant as far as delving into the psychological illness that exists within that dynamic. Other than that most of Soul on Ice is a complete lump of garbage. I can't fathom why this book is used in many University literature and sociology classes in America except to brainwash and indoctrinate white students with white guilt. I bet those classroom discussions are a real hoot!
Cleaver was certainly the weak link in the Black Panther leadership, ultimately contributing more towards its destruction than helping it. He wasn't really a hardcore black nationalist or racial seperatist when you get down to it, he wasn't, which was common for that time, an overblown hardcore Marxist or leftist. What Cleaver was really all about was expanding his overblown ego more than anything else. He also later proved himself to be a complete flake going through stages as a black right wing conservative, a born again Christian, and I think he even got involved in some sort of bizarre eastern religion for a while. There are lots of reasons to admire the Black Panther Party, Cleaver is not one of them.
Cleaver was certainly the weak link in the Black Panther leadership, ultimately contributing more towards its destruction than helping it. He wasn't really a hardcore black nationalist or racial seperatist when you get down to it, he wasn't, which was common for that time, an overblown hardcore Marxist or leftist. What Cleaver was really all about was expanding his overblown ego more than anything else. He also later proved himself to be a complete flake going through stages as a black right wing conservative, a born again Christian, and I think he even got involved in some sort of bizarre eastern religion for a while. There are lots of reasons to admire the Black Panther Party, Cleaver is not one of them.
March 21, 2015
I had to be very careful with this review because I had to remember that I was reviewing the book and not assessing Eldridge Cleaver as a person. But in all fairness, I have to say the book was great. However, Eldridge Cleaver was a highly confused, highly disturbed, extremely awkward predator who later became a drug addicted contradiction. But I digress. The book. That's what I'm reviewing.
I have a hard time considering this an autobiography. Although it contains a wealth of exposure to many of Eldridge Cleaver's life experiences, it really is a collection of essays/letters he wrote while incarcerated, therefore making it less of an autobiography and more of a collection of essays. Consider Martin Luther King, Jr's Letters from a Birmingham Jail. That wasn't classified as an autobiography. Just a book of letters. That's what this is, too.
But if we are to go forward with considering this an autobiography, it certainly is an autobiographical prose examining and revealing the development of Cleaver's soul rather than simply his being. Therefore, the title Soul on Ice is appropriate and reflective of the contents of this book.
This book is possibly one of the most complex books I've ever read. Not complex in the writing style or in terms of semantics. Complex in terms of how I felt throughout the read. Complex in terms of finding myself highly disturbed by some of the content, while loving the book at the same time. I've settled on the idea that Eldridge Cleaver was nuts and genius at the same time.
To be honest, I am still unsettled with the fact that I absolutely loved this book. A book written by a homophobic rapist. But I do. Here's what drove me to love this book:
1. Cleaver's pure and unapologetic honesty
2. The book is incredibly well-written
3. Several aspects of the book are eye-opening and informative
4. The book was written at the right time. A very important time in American History
5. The perspective it offers to the reader. Whether you agree or disagree with it, this book does an amazing job offering a pure and unfiltered presentation of Cleaver's perspective. How you choose to swallow his perspective is your own business, but the book allows a clear look into it and allows room for the reader to react whether they are shocked, pissed off or in agreement. I was never in agreement, but I appreciated the opportunity to explore why I wasn't. He gave me many reasons to support this.
6. And my favorite aspect of the book is that it demonstrates my firm belief that education (whether formal or informal) shapes how one experiences the world. It was beautiful to see how exposure to different ideologies and theories helped shape Cleaver's life experiences Not that his soul was beautiful, but the process of soul-shaping is, in general, and is demonstrated so wonderfully in this text.
I'm not cool with Cleaver, but I'm cool with this good book. Sounds weird. I know. I'm still trying to come to terms with that.
I have a hard time considering this an autobiography. Although it contains a wealth of exposure to many of Eldridge Cleaver's life experiences, it really is a collection of essays/letters he wrote while incarcerated, therefore making it less of an autobiography and more of a collection of essays. Consider Martin Luther King, Jr's Letters from a Birmingham Jail. That wasn't classified as an autobiography. Just a book of letters. That's what this is, too.
But if we are to go forward with considering this an autobiography, it certainly is an autobiographical prose examining and revealing the development of Cleaver's soul rather than simply his being. Therefore, the title Soul on Ice is appropriate and reflective of the contents of this book.
This book is possibly one of the most complex books I've ever read. Not complex in the writing style or in terms of semantics. Complex in terms of how I felt throughout the read. Complex in terms of finding myself highly disturbed by some of the content, while loving the book at the same time. I've settled on the idea that Eldridge Cleaver was nuts and genius at the same time.
To be honest, I am still unsettled with the fact that I absolutely loved this book. A book written by a homophobic rapist. But I do. Here's what drove me to love this book:
1. Cleaver's pure and unapologetic honesty
2. The book is incredibly well-written
3. Several aspects of the book are eye-opening and informative
4. The book was written at the right time. A very important time in American History
5. The perspective it offers to the reader. Whether you agree or disagree with it, this book does an amazing job offering a pure and unfiltered presentation of Cleaver's perspective. How you choose to swallow his perspective is your own business, but the book allows a clear look into it and allows room for the reader to react whether they are shocked, pissed off or in agreement. I was never in agreement, but I appreciated the opportunity to explore why I wasn't. He gave me many reasons to support this.
6. And my favorite aspect of the book is that it demonstrates my firm belief that education (whether formal or informal) shapes how one experiences the world. It was beautiful to see how exposure to different ideologies and theories helped shape Cleaver's life experiences Not that his soul was beautiful, but the process of soul-shaping is, in general, and is demonstrated so wonderfully in this text.
I'm not cool with Cleaver, but I'm cool with this good book. Sounds weird. I know. I'm still trying to come to terms with that.
October 8, 2023
It was 119 68 when I was walking through the mall in san Pablo California. I saw a stack of his books on the table, this book. I walked up to the book, took a look at it, and then I walked Away. I was afraid of it. I don't know where this fear came from, perhaps the news? The watts riothead happened 3 years before. I don't No if there were more riots. And it wasn't that I was afraid of all blacks, because I had black friends that I associated with in my religion. We didn't talk about the news
I saw this book a few days ago and decided to read it. What did I think? It was well written. And he had a lot of things to say that were very truthful about many of the white people in America. It was a very good book for it's time, but I have read better books. What's Saturn's me about the civil rights movement is that it feels like there is so much more that needs to be accomplished and that so little was accomplished back then. And right now it seems as if America is going backwards about so many things. In the 1,950s when I was in high school, so little was said about black history. I do not know if more was said in later years but now many of the white people want it all stifled. Perhaps I think when something is stifled More people will become interested in the subject and read about it. Just like when you ban a book.
I saw this book a few days ago and decided to read it. What did I think? It was well written. And he had a lot of things to say that were very truthful about many of the white people in America. It was a very good book for it's time, but I have read better books. What's Saturn's me about the civil rights movement is that it feels like there is so much more that needs to be accomplished and that so little was accomplished back then. And right now it seems as if America is going backwards about so many things. In the 1,950s when I was in high school, so little was said about black history. I do not know if more was said in later years but now many of the white people want it all stifled. Perhaps I think when something is stifled More people will become interested in the subject and read about it. Just like when you ban a book.
January 23, 2020
Boy was the misogyny and homophobia rampant in this one. It made it hard to get through. He really wasn't fucking with James Baldwin. I feel like I have to read this like 2-4 times to really break through some of the fucking madness involved in these pages.
I swear, sometimes he got on a tear where I was like - alright, this makes sense like for example the Blackman's stake in Vietnam and how the US wants to use black men abroad to fight for/against the exact thing they're denying them at home; and it's fucked up. Then, he'd get into black men and white women and I just couldn't - dude. I have so many issues with this. Not to say that anything he wrote was wrong, it's just that the logic.. I feel that he removed all agency from women. I have experienced the passages many have called controversial, but honestly - the last chapter, To All Black Women, From All Black Men probably simultaneously made me the maddest yet piqued my curiosity and plucked at my heartstring the most. Realizations of what has been done to the community. What men, black and white, have done to the black community.
The Primal Mitosis - I'm still struggling with this chapter after closing the book. Revolutionary leader of the Black Panther Party, many ascribe Eldridge Cleaver as a hero spewing hard truths necessary for black liberation; I'm not going to deny any viewpoints, but what I will say is that these words in Soul on Ice, in 2020, have aged like milk left out on the counter in the sunlight. The rage is powerful and I can see the passion, but damn - were people all the way listening back then?
I swear, sometimes he got on a tear where I was like - alright, this makes sense like for example the Blackman's stake in Vietnam and how the US wants to use black men abroad to fight for/against the exact thing they're denying them at home; and it's fucked up. Then, he'd get into black men and white women and I just couldn't - dude. I have so many issues with this. Not to say that anything he wrote was wrong, it's just that the logic.. I feel that he removed all agency from women. I have experienced the passages many have called controversial, but honestly - the last chapter, To All Black Women, From All Black Men probably simultaneously made me the maddest yet piqued my curiosity and plucked at my heartstring the most. Realizations of what has been done to the community. What men, black and white, have done to the black community.
The Primal Mitosis - I'm still struggling with this chapter after closing the book. Revolutionary leader of the Black Panther Party, many ascribe Eldridge Cleaver as a hero spewing hard truths necessary for black liberation; I'm not going to deny any viewpoints, but what I will say is that these words in Soul on Ice, in 2020, have aged like milk left out on the counter in the sunlight. The rage is powerful and I can see the passion, but damn - were people all the way listening back then?
October 18, 2020
But put on your crown, my Queen, and we will build a New City on these ruins.
I first read Soul on Ice as a teenager and while large portions of the opening prison letters were retained in my memory largely intact, the latter essays were likely beyond that adolescent. Often misogynistic and homophobic there is a poetic reshaping of revolutionary texts into something domestically applicable. I was certainly troubled by these missteps, the loose slurs which tumble out amidst an otherwise cogent piece of criticism.
The piece on James Baldwin and Norman Mailer was rather intriguing. The thoughts on Vietnam were likewise engaging. Rereading this today unleashed a broader torrent of memory, a sidelong appraisal of my life towards activism and service. I certainly have shifted almost exclusively towards service, other than throwing money periodically at causes, I just spend my time and energy doing the work, regardless of idealism.
I first read Soul on Ice as a teenager and while large portions of the opening prison letters were retained in my memory largely intact, the latter essays were likely beyond that adolescent. Often misogynistic and homophobic there is a poetic reshaping of revolutionary texts into something domestically applicable. I was certainly troubled by these missteps, the loose slurs which tumble out amidst an otherwise cogent piece of criticism.
The piece on James Baldwin and Norman Mailer was rather intriguing. The thoughts on Vietnam were likewise engaging. Rereading this today unleashed a broader torrent of memory, a sidelong appraisal of my life towards activism and service. I certainly have shifted almost exclusively towards service, other than throwing money periodically at causes, I just spend my time and energy doing the work, regardless of idealism.
May 5, 2011
I feel compelled to try to negate the overwhelmingly negative atmosphere on this page of Goodreads reviews, and to try to do so as convincingly as one person can amidst such abundant ignorance. There is a lot of whining, derision, mockery, and whatever going on here, and it simply does the book one grave injustice after another. This is not a children's book, or even one for young adults, so if you approach this book set in an immature frame of mind, set in your own conception of how the world is and should be, unwilling to yield to an experience so alien, you'll get burned. Don't even bother with it.
This is a man laying forth his naked soul, not just his, but the soul of a people that has been sickened, starved, beaten more thoroughly than any in history. It isn't so pretty, did you think it would be? It is in fact very ugly, Cleaver is somewhat extreme, but can you blame him? If you had even a basic realization of how horribly your kin have been abused for generations, would you be angry? Cleaver was an intelligent man, I think the book makes this obvious, and he became furious and indignant, because he realized. This fury, this incredible compassion, urgency.. imagine these things churning in Cleaver's soul. Imagine it aggravated by the hyperactive mind of a natural intellect, it's no secret what torture a powerful mind can wreak on the soul, and vice versa. Cleaver represents through his writing the tortured black, tortured intellect, tortured poor, tortured criminal... no wonder this writing hits so hard. It is a fearsome condemnation of America, both then, and today as well.
Our society was and, judging by these reviews, still is well-anesthetized to the trauma of the black American. So from our numbness we can easily launch criticisms, judgments, without feeling what we say. It is a trauma that is manifest in the sickness of Eldridge Cleaver. The sickness of 'revolutionary' rape, for example. A sickness that Cleaver denounces as juvenile and misguided on the very next page. I don't want to call Cleaver a victim, but how else do you describe the black American? People like free will, and they like to condemn each other without acknowledging the system, the environment and its very real role in deciding what we become. Before so freely condemning Cleaver, I would recommend condemning white America.
I find Cleaver's views on society accurate, some say they are too general, too illogical, etc. Welcome to segregated America. Welcome to the logic of separate but equal. This book is not about being rational. Cleaver is talking about people and how we relate, interact, coexist, clash; and he is talking about a very corrupt system, no ice-skating. I don't hate America, I almost love it. We have enjoyed privileges that are unrivaled. But consider the cost, because it is huge, and most of us today probably aren't paying it.
These reviews seem indicative of the book's difficulty, but also of a popular alienation from the race question, or any such challenge for that matter. It seems that nowadays people think social issues in America are solved, have forgotten about it, and get confused when they read something that offends them. Well, if you're short on empathy, if your mind is bedsore, leave Cleaver alone. I have no answer for you. Read something else if you want to open your mind or something noble like that. Whatever you do, make sure you don't write a Goodreads review about it.
This is a man laying forth his naked soul, not just his, but the soul of a people that has been sickened, starved, beaten more thoroughly than any in history. It isn't so pretty, did you think it would be? It is in fact very ugly, Cleaver is somewhat extreme, but can you blame him? If you had even a basic realization of how horribly your kin have been abused for generations, would you be angry? Cleaver was an intelligent man, I think the book makes this obvious, and he became furious and indignant, because he realized. This fury, this incredible compassion, urgency.. imagine these things churning in Cleaver's soul. Imagine it aggravated by the hyperactive mind of a natural intellect, it's no secret what torture a powerful mind can wreak on the soul, and vice versa. Cleaver represents through his writing the tortured black, tortured intellect, tortured poor, tortured criminal... no wonder this writing hits so hard. It is a fearsome condemnation of America, both then, and today as well.
Our society was and, judging by these reviews, still is well-anesthetized to the trauma of the black American. So from our numbness we can easily launch criticisms, judgments, without feeling what we say. It is a trauma that is manifest in the sickness of Eldridge Cleaver. The sickness of 'revolutionary' rape, for example. A sickness that Cleaver denounces as juvenile and misguided on the very next page. I don't want to call Cleaver a victim, but how else do you describe the black American? People like free will, and they like to condemn each other without acknowledging the system, the environment and its very real role in deciding what we become. Before so freely condemning Cleaver, I would recommend condemning white America.
I find Cleaver's views on society accurate, some say they are too general, too illogical, etc. Welcome to segregated America. Welcome to the logic of separate but equal. This book is not about being rational. Cleaver is talking about people and how we relate, interact, coexist, clash; and he is talking about a very corrupt system, no ice-skating. I don't hate America, I almost love it. We have enjoyed privileges that are unrivaled. But consider the cost, because it is huge, and most of us today probably aren't paying it.
These reviews seem indicative of the book's difficulty, but also of a popular alienation from the race question, or any such challenge for that matter. It seems that nowadays people think social issues in America are solved, have forgotten about it, and get confused when they read something that offends them. Well, if you're short on empathy, if your mind is bedsore, leave Cleaver alone. I have no answer for you. Read something else if you want to open your mind or something noble like that. Whatever you do, make sure you don't write a Goodreads review about it.
January 3, 2008
I've never liked Eldridge Cleaver.
There's a fascinating anecdote in the Wikipedia article about Cleaver: It claims that he applied for a technical writer position at Apple Computer in 1980; his resume listed a single publication, this book. Apple's documentation staff had read the book, evidently didn't want to work with a sociopath, and therefore declined to hire him.
There's a fascinating anecdote in the Wikipedia article about Cleaver: It claims that he applied for a technical writer position at Apple Computer in 1980; his resume listed a single publication, this book. Apple's documentation staff had read the book, evidently didn't want to work with a sociopath, and therefore declined to hire him.
July 13, 2022
fuck this dude. why do men who ruin women’s lives get to be remembered?
July 1, 2020
Eldrige Cleaver's "Soul on Ice" starts out as an important contribution to radical ideas on blackness and race but ends turning into a worthless homophobic, sexist drivel.
"Soul on Ice" is split into four sections. The first section are a series of letter Cleaver wrote while in jail. In these letters, he makes important remarks on blackness and the position of black people in society and provides important social commentary on the ghettoization of black Americans and the need for radical change. Following this are a series of essays on similar topics and then and odd (?) collection of love letters he wrote to a (presumably) white lawyer. The book ends, though, with several essays espousing deeply homophobic ideas including an unacceptable critique of James Baldwin in which Cleaver accuses James Baldwin of undermining radical black politics because of his queer critiques of black masculinity. That tied on to a long diatribe on women make this book almost unbearable.
A book that has some interesting ideas but that has really, truly not aged well, skip Cleaver and look for some intersectional options.
"Soul on Ice" is split into four sections. The first section are a series of letter Cleaver wrote while in jail. In these letters, he makes important remarks on blackness and the position of black people in society and provides important social commentary on the ghettoization of black Americans and the need for radical change. Following this are a series of essays on similar topics and then and odd (?) collection of love letters he wrote to a (presumably) white lawyer. The book ends, though, with several essays espousing deeply homophobic ideas including an unacceptable critique of James Baldwin in which Cleaver accuses James Baldwin of undermining radical black politics because of his queer critiques of black masculinity. That tied on to a long diatribe on women make this book almost unbearable.
A book that has some interesting ideas but that has really, truly not aged well, skip Cleaver and look for some intersectional options.
January 1, 2016
As I read I felt in the presence of a man without doubt of any kind. I read it with a sense of loss, however: an awareness of lost momentum, lost years, lost confidence that something radically better was about to happen for African Americans, something I believe Cleaver thought when he wrote this work. There is no doubt that parts of this work are so deeply misogynistic and homophobic that it's difficult to defend my positive take on it. The review is not for the man or his beliefs as a whole, but for the power of this book to open a window into a strange and unsettling era, and to come away with more understanding of that era.
For example, Cleaver in one section justifies his rape of (more than one?) woman as a natural outcome of the hundreds of years of white men raping black women, and killing black men, rather than a private act of violence for which Cleaver feels moral responsibility. Just as John Brown (who Cleaver canonizes) is a murderous lunatic in one context, for killing people for the cause of abolition, in another context, for example after Lincoln declared war, killing people becomes just. In this manner Cleaver forgives himself for his acts of violence toward women (or actually never gets around to thinking he would need forgiveness).
A good companion book to this memoir is Susan Brownmiller's Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape.The matter of fact way that Cleaver suggests the violation of women's bodies is an act of self-identity, as well as an act of war, is repulsive and horrible, and yet it reflects the truths of almost any war zone ever documented. It also gives insight to the reader, in a very visceral way, how fundamental rifts in identity politics between Black Power and Feminism clashed and contradicted one another in this era.
For example, Cleaver in one section justifies his rape of (more than one?) woman as a natural outcome of the hundreds of years of white men raping black women, and killing black men, rather than a private act of violence for which Cleaver feels moral responsibility. Just as John Brown (who Cleaver canonizes) is a murderous lunatic in one context, for killing people for the cause of abolition, in another context, for example after Lincoln declared war, killing people becomes just. In this manner Cleaver forgives himself for his acts of violence toward women (or actually never gets around to thinking he would need forgiveness).
A good companion book to this memoir is Susan Brownmiller's Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape.The matter of fact way that Cleaver suggests the violation of women's bodies is an act of self-identity, as well as an act of war, is repulsive and horrible, and yet it reflects the truths of almost any war zone ever documented. It also gives insight to the reader, in a very visceral way, how fundamental rifts in identity politics between Black Power and Feminism clashed and contradicted one another in this era.
April 20, 2017
I looked for this book yesterday, and I found it where I remembered it as having been. That in itself is a small miracle. Usually a decision to look for a book is the kiss of death as far as finding it. Typically I will then find the book six months or a couple of years later when looking for another one. As you can imagine I don't have much of a shelving system. But this one was where it should have been. Maybe more than a small miracle. We moved into this house in 1977 but the room where the bookcase with the book was (and where I am sitting at my computer and typing right now) got added on in 1986. The book is vintage '68. It was on a high shelf--likely why it remained in its place all during the raising of children. Miracle!
I wanted to find a particular part. The man has lived in a downtrodden state not conducive to personal dignity. That's what's wrong with his relationship with his wife. Then he does something noble and redeems himself in (his own and) her eyes. Then there is a traffic stop, and he grovels, and it is all shot back to hell. I want to find that part. That's the way I remember it. That's why I looked for the book.
I didn't find the part I was looking for on a first cursory search. Maybe Google books can help.
Yesterday I located the book. Today I go to Goodreads and a friend is commenting on somebody's review of--Soul on Ice.
Miracle.
Addendum: "No preview" in Google books. But I found the part I wanted. Part IV Chapter 1, "The Allegory of the Black Eunuchs," pp. 167-168.
I wanted to find a particular part. The man has lived in a downtrodden state not conducive to personal dignity. That's what's wrong with his relationship with his wife. Then he does something noble and redeems himself in (his own and) her eyes. Then there is a traffic stop, and he grovels, and it is all shot back to hell. I want to find that part. That's the way I remember it. That's why I looked for the book.
I didn't find the part I was looking for on a first cursory search. Maybe Google books can help.
Yesterday I located the book. Today I go to Goodreads and a friend is commenting on somebody's review of--Soul on Ice.
Miracle.
Addendum: "No preview" in Google books. But I found the part I wanted. Part IV Chapter 1, "The Allegory of the Black Eunuchs," pp. 167-168.
June 17, 2020
I read this book and wrote this review in February before everything went to hell in a hand basket...then forgot to post it.
Listen. Look. Okay.
This book is something else. The person who wrote it is something else. It falls under the umbrella of "things that would not be published today." Which, if I'm being honest, has quickly become my favorite non-genre. This will not be everybody's cup of tea. Actually, it's not meant to be a cup of tea at all, but a scalding elixir that does not go down easily, but, if you can stomach it, may prove to have restorative powers.
Please know my affinity for this book does not stem from some desire to be seen as an edgy reader. I know what it’s like to be misled by that type. I knew girls who praised Lolita to the point I thought it was going to be some grand love story…only to read it and find out it’s about pedophilia. So let me make it clear: I would be remiss if I didn't mention that rape is mentioned. I DO NOT WANT ANYONE TO EXPERIENCE ANY EMOTIONAL DISTRESSS BECAUSE THEY READ THIS REVIEW AND THEN DECIDED TO READ THIS BOOK WITHOUT KNOWING WHAT THEY WERE GETTING INTO. That said, there are no graphic depictions of rape. If you can compartmentalize your feelings about certain elements (which I’m not saying you should) this is a very interesting, uncut, unabashedly blunt book. This book is a piece of work. As is the author.
You could call him an ex-con, a former rapist, a moderately mental man, or all of the above. You could call him highly intelligent, perceptive, self and socially aware, revolutionary, or all of the above. Some will regard him as close minded, others as someone whose third eye is wide open. Controversial character or real talker, he wrote a hell of a book. A memoir made up of essays he wrote while locked-up.
Cleaver became both analytic in thought and fertile in expression while incarcerated. He was able to evolve from who he was into a person who utilized his natural perceptivity into a purpose. To be sure, this metamorphosis was not thanks to the prison system itself, or any program provided to him via prison, but IN SPITE of the prison system through SELF-education—both exteriorly and internally. (Tookie’s memoir came to mind while reading this, though I’d say Cleaver is a wittier writer.) He spent most of his allotted free time writing with little to no interest in television time or going out on the yard. He wanted to not only write as much as he could, but read as much has he could. However, prison proved an impedance on that. The books he wanted were often not permitted.
[SIDE BAR: I have a friend who is currently incarcerated in a federal prison, and he and I have had this conversation. He told me that they could not have any “urban” books. Which we both took to mean books based in the black experience or where the main characters are black. On the flipside, he said he’s seen both Fifty Shades of Grey and old timey westerns (I’ll refrain from calling them what they were called) be allowed despite them having graphic depictions of sex and violence. To the sex point: He’s seen Zane be turned down. To the violence point: No series about black street gang members is making it in, but have a white male protagonist with a ten-gallon hat and some spur clad boots who blows the faces off a couple dozen people in the length of a novel and it’s “safe reading.” So he’s in there reading Jackie Collins like a sixty-year-old white woman. I have also been able to send him MY books. A few years ago I wrote a series about a Los Angeles madam who runs a high-end male escort agency, and the young men who work for her. There’s prostitution, sex, and drug usage all described at length. Not to mention what I thought would be the biggest caveat, me being indie, meaning the books coming straight from me instead of a publisher/retailer/recognized book club like the rules of this institution specifically stated.
I sent them. He got them.
Now. What if I wanted to send him THIS book?
I have to wonder.]
So the same literary standards exist in jails and prisons as did six decades ago.
Of course, I’m sure this is all dependent on the particular institution and, in some instances, who is skimming through the mail that day. I know of others who have read such titles while incarcerated. My point is it still happens. [During Banned Book Week when I was reading different lists I saw just how many black-written books are banned or have been banned from correctional facilities. Many of the titles are considered Must Reads or Classics by most.] Perhaps even more bothersome than the prohibiting of black fiction…is the prohibiting of black nonfiction. That, to me, seems like a clear sign that black-on-black education is frowned upon. That black empowerment is frowned upon. That blackness is frowned upon. For what other reason would certain classic works of nonfiction have been banned in prison/jails throughout the years? If you visit most jail/prison websites it will list things like “graphic sex, graphic violence, promotion of criminal activities, ideas on how to escape” as the themes that will get a book sent back. Not “urbanity.” And yet…return to sender they go.
Another topic Cleaver touches on that has yet to be remedied in 2020, and has actually been a mainstream topic of conversation recently, is the flippant title white America assigns to art made by Black people.
Title. As in not plural. No wide breadth of distinction or room for subcategorizing.
Cleaver writes about how it was called N***o* music. Movies. Athletes. Clothing. Etc. I can’t help but to think how now—with a smidgen more decorum but no less careless condescend—it’s…wait for it…urban. Again with the urban. Urban radio on the airways. Urban contemporary at the Grammys.
But let a white person half-heartedly appropriate it, and it suddenly becomes pop. Or one of the 89 subgenres of rock. Or high fashion. Or whatever.
I mean…if ethnic adjectives are good for the goose why aren’t they good for the gander? Why isn’t country/folk called Caucasian contemporary? Wait, what did you say? White people didn’t start folk music? Shut your doggone mouth ‘fore I woop ya with a Waylon record!
Allow me to parlay into my next bullet point…
I loved Cleaver’s writings about the white heroes white people cling to.
The “paper tiger” hero, James Bond, offering the whites a triumphant image of themselves, is what many whites want desperately to hear reaffirmed: I am still the white man, lord of the land, licensed to kill, and the world is still and empire at my feet. James Bond feeds on that secret little anxiety.
This is one of the truest quotes I’ve ever read. If you’re white and reading this, think about your fathers, or brothers, or neighbors, or boys you went to school with. Does this not ring true? Hell, maybe it rings true about you. I don’t know.
On the flipside, Cleaver talks about white youth repudiating their heritage and taking poc as their heroes.
Of course, the youth he’s talking about is the youth of the sixties. From the 1960s to 2020s there have been a great many white kids that have taken POC as their heroes (whether it be ball players, rappers, etc.) But I’m not sure they all see them as people. I’m not sure if tasked with the decision to either side with the missteps of their own or the teachings of their idols what they’d do. I’m not sure they take these heroes, in their heart, out of adolescence and into adulthood with them. I know he felt hope at seeing white kids have black heroes, but I’m not sure in sixty years that’s really lead anywhere especially positive. I’m not sure.
Cleaver has words and thoguhts for many people. But who was the very most villainous in his eyes?
The white woman.
And…well…I can’t prick my fur up and pretend I don’t know what he’s talking about.
The white woman is the co-star on the mental reel that haunts the white man.
The white woman who is known to have had relations with black men has seen the white man’s jugular at its most prominent. I promise.
If there was no white woman, would white men feel as vitriolic about black men?
I can’t say for sure, but it’s food for thought.
There is a Led Zeppelin lyric that goes “Yours is the cloth, mine is the hand that sews time. His is the force that lies within.” It has nothing to do with this subject, but this subject makes me think about it
.
Aside from that angle...the white woman has known how to weaponize herself throughout history. From fictionalizing her fear with breathy theatrics and dry eyes, to yelling wolf while playing the lamb; the white woman has given reason to the white man who never needed a reason and who does not operate off of reason.
There is some irony, though, in the fact that he fell in love with his white female lawyer. I’m not sure that was really love, though. I think it was two-game runners getting off on running game. But that’s just my take.
Cleaver was in jail when Malcom X was assassinated. Like many, Malcom was more than important to him. Unlike many, he separated the minutia that multiplies with notoriety from the man. He spoke of the importance of Malcom not being that he was Muslim, or who he became aligned with, but what/who he was advocating for and the truth he was speaking.
After Cleaver was released, he went on to be one of the most well-known members of the Black Panthers. He was a revolutionary. He was a leader. He was a public speaker. He was the husband of Kathleen Cleaver for a period of time.
But…then…eventually…he became a conservative republican on crack (literally, not euphemistically). Eventually someone could have very legitimately asked him what he asked the old man in his essay “The Parable of the Eunuchs and Lazarus.”
I think it’s very plausible for someone who has become recently in-fired to fall susceptible to wanting something to subscribe to. I think it’s also very plausible for someone who’s just came into a little power or clout to become easily confused on what to do with it. That goes for every creed, race, and gender throughout history. Many with a following are a follower of something themselves, and many times that has gotten in the way of their own leadership abilities. Reversely, back against the wall and head on the ropes, many people’s firm cores desolidify.
I don’t know if this is what happened to Cleaver in the end. I don’t even know if it’s my place to speculate. What I do know is Nipsey—who read Cleaver and inspired me to—did not fall victim to what I described in the prior paragraph. He was not confused on what to do with his power. His core did not desolidify. He was better.
In conclusion, regardless of his many flaws, Eldridge Cleaver was one hell of a wordsmith.
Listen. Look. Okay.
This book is something else. The person who wrote it is something else. It falls under the umbrella of "things that would not be published today." Which, if I'm being honest, has quickly become my favorite non-genre. This will not be everybody's cup of tea. Actually, it's not meant to be a cup of tea at all, but a scalding elixir that does not go down easily, but, if you can stomach it, may prove to have restorative powers.
Please know my affinity for this book does not stem from some desire to be seen as an edgy reader. I know what it’s like to be misled by that type. I knew girls who praised Lolita to the point I thought it was going to be some grand love story…only to read it and find out it’s about pedophilia. So let me make it clear: I would be remiss if I didn't mention that rape is mentioned. I DO NOT WANT ANYONE TO EXPERIENCE ANY EMOTIONAL DISTRESSS BECAUSE THEY READ THIS REVIEW AND THEN DECIDED TO READ THIS BOOK WITHOUT KNOWING WHAT THEY WERE GETTING INTO. That said, there are no graphic depictions of rape. If you can compartmentalize your feelings about certain elements (which I’m not saying you should) this is a very interesting, uncut, unabashedly blunt book. This book is a piece of work. As is the author.
You could call him an ex-con, a former rapist, a moderately mental man, or all of the above. You could call him highly intelligent, perceptive, self and socially aware, revolutionary, or all of the above. Some will regard him as close minded, others as someone whose third eye is wide open. Controversial character or real talker, he wrote a hell of a book. A memoir made up of essays he wrote while locked-up.
Cleaver became both analytic in thought and fertile in expression while incarcerated. He was able to evolve from who he was into a person who utilized his natural perceptivity into a purpose. To be sure, this metamorphosis was not thanks to the prison system itself, or any program provided to him via prison, but IN SPITE of the prison system through SELF-education—both exteriorly and internally. (Tookie’s memoir came to mind while reading this, though I’d say Cleaver is a wittier writer.) He spent most of his allotted free time writing with little to no interest in television time or going out on the yard. He wanted to not only write as much as he could, but read as much has he could. However, prison proved an impedance on that. The books he wanted were often not permitted.
[SIDE BAR: I have a friend who is currently incarcerated in a federal prison, and he and I have had this conversation. He told me that they could not have any “urban” books. Which we both took to mean books based in the black experience or where the main characters are black. On the flipside, he said he’s seen both Fifty Shades of Grey and old timey westerns (I’ll refrain from calling them what they were called) be allowed despite them having graphic depictions of sex and violence. To the sex point: He’s seen Zane be turned down. To the violence point: No series about black street gang members is making it in, but have a white male protagonist with a ten-gallon hat and some spur clad boots who blows the faces off a couple dozen people in the length of a novel and it’s “safe reading.” So he’s in there reading Jackie Collins like a sixty-year-old white woman. I have also been able to send him MY books. A few years ago I wrote a series about a Los Angeles madam who runs a high-end male escort agency, and the young men who work for her. There’s prostitution, sex, and drug usage all described at length. Not to mention what I thought would be the biggest caveat, me being indie, meaning the books coming straight from me instead of a publisher/retailer/recognized book club like the rules of this institution specifically stated.
I sent them. He got them.
Now. What if I wanted to send him THIS book?
I have to wonder.]
So the same literary standards exist in jails and prisons as did six decades ago.
Of course, I’m sure this is all dependent on the particular institution and, in some instances, who is skimming through the mail that day. I know of others who have read such titles while incarcerated. My point is it still happens. [During Banned Book Week when I was reading different lists I saw just how many black-written books are banned or have been banned from correctional facilities. Many of the titles are considered Must Reads or Classics by most.] Perhaps even more bothersome than the prohibiting of black fiction…is the prohibiting of black nonfiction. That, to me, seems like a clear sign that black-on-black education is frowned upon. That black empowerment is frowned upon. That blackness is frowned upon. For what other reason would certain classic works of nonfiction have been banned in prison/jails throughout the years? If you visit most jail/prison websites it will list things like “graphic sex, graphic violence, promotion of criminal activities, ideas on how to escape” as the themes that will get a book sent back. Not “urbanity.” And yet…return to sender they go.
Another topic Cleaver touches on that has yet to be remedied in 2020, and has actually been a mainstream topic of conversation recently, is the flippant title white America assigns to art made by Black people.
Title. As in not plural. No wide breadth of distinction or room for subcategorizing.
Cleaver writes about how it was called N***o* music. Movies. Athletes. Clothing. Etc. I can’t help but to think how now—with a smidgen more decorum but no less careless condescend—it’s…wait for it…urban. Again with the urban. Urban radio on the airways. Urban contemporary at the Grammys.
But let a white person half-heartedly appropriate it, and it suddenly becomes pop. Or one of the 89 subgenres of rock. Or high fashion. Or whatever.
I mean…if ethnic adjectives are good for the goose why aren’t they good for the gander? Why isn’t country/folk called Caucasian contemporary? Wait, what did you say? White people didn’t start folk music? Shut your doggone mouth ‘fore I woop ya with a Waylon record!
Allow me to parlay into my next bullet point…
I loved Cleaver’s writings about the white heroes white people cling to.
The “paper tiger” hero, James Bond, offering the whites a triumphant image of themselves, is what many whites want desperately to hear reaffirmed: I am still the white man, lord of the land, licensed to kill, and the world is still and empire at my feet. James Bond feeds on that secret little anxiety.
This is one of the truest quotes I’ve ever read. If you’re white and reading this, think about your fathers, or brothers, or neighbors, or boys you went to school with. Does this not ring true? Hell, maybe it rings true about you. I don’t know.
On the flipside, Cleaver talks about white youth repudiating their heritage and taking poc as their heroes.
Of course, the youth he’s talking about is the youth of the sixties. From the 1960s to 2020s there have been a great many white kids that have taken POC as their heroes (whether it be ball players, rappers, etc.) But I’m not sure they all see them as people. I’m not sure if tasked with the decision to either side with the missteps of their own or the teachings of their idols what they’d do. I’m not sure they take these heroes, in their heart, out of adolescence and into adulthood with them. I know he felt hope at seeing white kids have black heroes, but I’m not sure in sixty years that’s really lead anywhere especially positive. I’m not sure.
Cleaver has words and thoguhts for many people. But who was the very most villainous in his eyes?
The white woman.
And…well…I can’t prick my fur up and pretend I don’t know what he’s talking about.
The white woman is the co-star on the mental reel that haunts the white man.
The white woman who is known to have had relations with black men has seen the white man’s jugular at its most prominent. I promise.
If there was no white woman, would white men feel as vitriolic about black men?
I can’t say for sure, but it’s food for thought.
There is a Led Zeppelin lyric that goes “Yours is the cloth, mine is the hand that sews time. His is the force that lies within.” It has nothing to do with this subject, but this subject makes me think about it
.
Aside from that angle...the white woman has known how to weaponize herself throughout history. From fictionalizing her fear with breathy theatrics and dry eyes, to yelling wolf while playing the lamb; the white woman has given reason to the white man who never needed a reason and who does not operate off of reason.
There is some irony, though, in the fact that he fell in love with his white female lawyer. I’m not sure that was really love, though. I think it was two-game runners getting off on running game. But that’s just my take.
Cleaver was in jail when Malcom X was assassinated. Like many, Malcom was more than important to him. Unlike many, he separated the minutia that multiplies with notoriety from the man. He spoke of the importance of Malcom not being that he was Muslim, or who he became aligned with, but what/who he was advocating for and the truth he was speaking.
After Cleaver was released, he went on to be one of the most well-known members of the Black Panthers. He was a revolutionary. He was a leader. He was a public speaker. He was the husband of Kathleen Cleaver for a period of time.
But…then…eventually…he became a conservative republican on crack (literally, not euphemistically). Eventually someone could have very legitimately asked him what he asked the old man in his essay “The Parable of the Eunuchs and Lazarus.”
I think it’s very plausible for someone who has become recently in-fired to fall susceptible to wanting something to subscribe to. I think it’s also very plausible for someone who’s just came into a little power or clout to become easily confused on what to do with it. That goes for every creed, race, and gender throughout history. Many with a following are a follower of something themselves, and many times that has gotten in the way of their own leadership abilities. Reversely, back against the wall and head on the ropes, many people’s firm cores desolidify.
I don’t know if this is what happened to Cleaver in the end. I don’t even know if it’s my place to speculate. What I do know is Nipsey—who read Cleaver and inspired me to—did not fall victim to what I described in the prior paragraph. He was not confused on what to do with his power. His core did not desolidify. He was better.
In conclusion, regardless of his many flaws, Eldridge Cleaver was one hell of a wordsmith.
July 3, 2007
Step Two in my attempts to not be a racial invalid. This book, which if I remember correctly was mostly written in prison from a rape conviction, does not do much to promote the "we're really all the same" attitude; in my naivety, I was probably surprised to hear this coming from a black guy. It was undoubtedly also the first time I heard negative opinions of The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. from someone who wasn't a certified white supremacist.
Mr. Cleaver makes no attempt to smooth over any wounds, and I'm sure his blunt honesty probably scared a few whities. But the difference between the book and a pamphlet of honky-hating propaganda is that good ol' Elridge takes the time to explain and dissect the issues; e.g., rather than just dispel the idea that black men have a soft spot for white women, he dives into a lengthy and pretty eloquent explanation of just why it is that way. In the end, despite what most people would consider radical tendencies, Mr. Cleaver comes off as sharp and voice that could stand to be heard by more people.
At least, I think. I'm probably just a lame-ass white boy who likes the idea of being hip or something.
Mr. Cleaver makes no attempt to smooth over any wounds, and I'm sure his blunt honesty probably scared a few whities. But the difference between the book and a pamphlet of honky-hating propaganda is that good ol' Elridge takes the time to explain and dissect the issues; e.g., rather than just dispel the idea that black men have a soft spot for white women, he dives into a lengthy and pretty eloquent explanation of just why it is that way. In the end, despite what most people would consider radical tendencies, Mr. Cleaver comes off as sharp and voice that could stand to be heard by more people.
At least, I think. I'm probably just a lame-ass white boy who likes the idea of being hip or something.
May 6, 2011
I'm done. When I initially read this book forty some years ago as a chick still in high school I was naievly dazzled. Rereading it now I hoped to gain a perspective of the time it was written. Now it reads like the diatribe of an obsessed, bitter hater. I can certainly understand the validity of many of the points made in this book, but the seething vitriolic undercurrents take the whole thing down. Of course, I now have read information regarding the balance of the Eldridge Cleaver's life and the incongruous wide swings of perspective of his later years. Three stars for the memories of the first read.
August 12, 2021
Well, the chapter on James Baldwin positively reeked of homophobia. Anyone who has had the misfortune to argue with someone who 'just loves to play Devil's Advocate' knows that being a clever person who can make eloquent arguments is not the same thing as being right. Cleaver seems to think it makes one righteous. Personally, I'm not particularly interested in gender theory from a guy who straight up tells the reader in the first chapter that he's sexually assaulted a bunch of women. I'm a bit more interested in hearing their stories.
July 3, 2020
This man was no civil rights activist. Misguided and disturbed he took active pleasure in the rape of women. If you want to educate yourself and find understanding in the BLM movement please look elsewhere: Malcolm X, James Baldwin, and Angela Davis are fundamental places to begin, Clever is not such a source.
July 12, 2009
I should feel guiltier about not liking this book, I suppose, but I don't think that would be fair.
A large portion of the book's latter subject matter consists of an idea that a partition between the world of the white man and the world of the black man can be adequately represented, in short, by saying that the white man assigned the black man the status of being representative of the Body (capitalization as it appears in the book) while the white man appoints himself as a personification of the Mind.
I don't ascribe to simplifications like that when it comes to trying to classify people. It's as erroneous as believing one gender is smarter or dumber or lazier or more hard-working than any other, or that whichever way one's flag flys, so to speak, determines his or her character implicitly.
It's the same suit all the assholes wear, tailored here and there for just another asshole to parade himself in. I honestly don't know how much any of what I read in this book had to do with being a black man in the '70's. It seemed to intimate only what it was like to be Eldridge Cleaver, and what it was like to live in Eldridge Cleaver's mind. My personal opinion is that it was fraught with a lot of contradiction, like anyone else's, but that it was also a bit too enamored of itself to do anyone any good, or to argue any point saliently by perceiving the opponent with at least a small degree of genuine understanding, if not sympathy. Eldridge Cleaver seems pretty pissed off most of the time, which isn't wrong in itself. But assigning that anger under an auspice of fighting the good fight for an oppressed people strikes me as rather egotistical. I guess I'm saying this: everything he said was not for the benefit of others, despite the high-minded opinion he otherwise held for himself as a kind of cultural illuminator.
So, I guess I'm not a fan. I gritted my teeth over an unprovoked parenthetical passage written in the midst of a deconstruction of the sexual impasses of the white woman (whom the author of the book terms, in a kind of self-styled, fatuous psuedo-psychological lingo, as "the Ultrafeminine"):
"At the end of her flight from her body is a sky-high wall of ice. (If a lesbian is anything she is a frigid woman, a frozen cunt, with a warp and a crack in the wall of her ice.)"
Christ. What a fuckwad. A misogynist, actually. Also, convicted and sent to prison for serial rape. I believe it was in this period that he began to become a mover and shaker in the black power movement, and in which he also began this book.
It is hard to separate the author from the man when there is so much shielding him from criticism for simply being a terrible human being.
Anyway. That's that. There's more, but it's not important enough to mention. I think my point is more or less clear on this one.
A large portion of the book's latter subject matter consists of an idea that a partition between the world of the white man and the world of the black man can be adequately represented, in short, by saying that the white man assigned the black man the status of being representative of the Body (capitalization as it appears in the book) while the white man appoints himself as a personification of the Mind.
I don't ascribe to simplifications like that when it comes to trying to classify people. It's as erroneous as believing one gender is smarter or dumber or lazier or more hard-working than any other, or that whichever way one's flag flys, so to speak, determines his or her character implicitly.
It's the same suit all the assholes wear, tailored here and there for just another asshole to parade himself in. I honestly don't know how much any of what I read in this book had to do with being a black man in the '70's. It seemed to intimate only what it was like to be Eldridge Cleaver, and what it was like to live in Eldridge Cleaver's mind. My personal opinion is that it was fraught with a lot of contradiction, like anyone else's, but that it was also a bit too enamored of itself to do anyone any good, or to argue any point saliently by perceiving the opponent with at least a small degree of genuine understanding, if not sympathy. Eldridge Cleaver seems pretty pissed off most of the time, which isn't wrong in itself. But assigning that anger under an auspice of fighting the good fight for an oppressed people strikes me as rather egotistical. I guess I'm saying this: everything he said was not for the benefit of others, despite the high-minded opinion he otherwise held for himself as a kind of cultural illuminator.
So, I guess I'm not a fan. I gritted my teeth over an unprovoked parenthetical passage written in the midst of a deconstruction of the sexual impasses of the white woman (whom the author of the book terms, in a kind of self-styled, fatuous psuedo-psychological lingo, as "the Ultrafeminine"):
"At the end of her flight from her body is a sky-high wall of ice. (If a lesbian is anything she is a frigid woman, a frozen cunt, with a warp and a crack in the wall of her ice.)"
Christ. What a fuckwad. A misogynist, actually. Also, convicted and sent to prison for serial rape. I believe it was in this period that he began to become a mover and shaker in the black power movement, and in which he also began this book.
It is hard to separate the author from the man when there is so much shielding him from criticism for simply being a terrible human being.
Anyway. That's that. There's more, but it's not important enough to mention. I think my point is more or less clear on this one.
April 1, 2016
Incredible. Though some of the specifics of Eldridge Cleaver's ideology are a bit dated, his overall intellect shines through in this tome that shares uncomfortable truths about not only Western society, but modern society in general.
The best part of this is the story of Cleaver himself. Was a criminal until he was sent to prison, and then he started to read, and read and read. Bang - all of a sudden he's writing critiques of Norman Mailer (Author), James Baldwin and more - and his words have an impact.
But just a great read, and every time I think that his admonitions are archaic, I just turn on the news. We've got a long way to go - and it takes books like these to help us find the way.
The best part of this is the story of Cleaver himself. Was a criminal until he was sent to prison, and then he started to read, and read and read. Bang - all of a sudden he's writing critiques of Norman Mailer (Author), James Baldwin and more - and his words have an impact.
But just a great read, and every time I think that his admonitions are archaic, I just turn on the news. We've got a long way to go - and it takes books like these to help us find the way.
February 2, 2021
This sure is a radical book, but very uneven. The beginning and the end of this book are pure garbage. In today's moral standards a horrible collection of extreme misogyny, homofobia and pointless musing about the sexuality of different races. But in the middle there are very sharp observations about the American culture and race relations that are sadly very current. So reading this was a emotional roller-coaster. But still i question why some people think this book is a master piece. It is not.
March 3, 2022
Literally horrible. I don’t know why people are rating this book highly. I guess they like controversy, but this man is a horrible human being. He HATES women, and he especially DESPISES black women.. I get the message within the book, but there is no overlooking how disgusting of a human being this man is…. A very triggering read.
February 4, 2017
Now I can say I've read it...
To be honest, I wasn't really sure what I was getting when I started listening to this audiobook. I knew Eldridge Cleaver was a Black Panther. But I didn't know if this was an autobiography or memoir or a book he wrote about the Black Power struggle of the 60's. It turns out it was kind of neither and both at the same time. The internet synopsis says they are a collection of essays he wrote during his time in jail prior to his involvement with the Black Panther Party. As I listened, I actually felt they were more journal or diary entries. Some even felt like letters or even short stories he hoped maybe to publish. There was some very profound thoughts and theories discussed. Some things I agreed very much with and consigned his words as they were read out to me. I was also educated and stopped to ponder a few things he said. I even wrote down a quote or two. I learned something about him as a person and about his experience in jail. I also was given an outlook of some of the thoughts and feelings of that time period. Some times I felt the book was a bit dated. Other times I felt certain points transcend time because though the faces of the people change, history has shown, people never really change. For the most part I felt it was an informative and thought provoking read. But there were a few times Eldridge went a little space cadet on me and I was lost and unsure what he was preaching about. These times I did a little forwarding.
This is necessary reading in some circles and I'm glad I finally got a chance read. Three stars in the best possible way.
To be honest, I wasn't really sure what I was getting when I started listening to this audiobook. I knew Eldridge Cleaver was a Black Panther. But I didn't know if this was an autobiography or memoir or a book he wrote about the Black Power struggle of the 60's. It turns out it was kind of neither and both at the same time. The internet synopsis says they are a collection of essays he wrote during his time in jail prior to his involvement with the Black Panther Party. As I listened, I actually felt they were more journal or diary entries. Some even felt like letters or even short stories he hoped maybe to publish. There was some very profound thoughts and theories discussed. Some things I agreed very much with and consigned his words as they were read out to me. I was also educated and stopped to ponder a few things he said. I even wrote down a quote or two. I learned something about him as a person and about his experience in jail. I also was given an outlook of some of the thoughts and feelings of that time period. Some times I felt the book was a bit dated. Other times I felt certain points transcend time because though the faces of the people change, history has shown, people never really change. For the most part I felt it was an informative and thought provoking read. But there were a few times Eldridge went a little space cadet on me and I was lost and unsure what he was preaching about. These times I did a little forwarding.
This is necessary reading in some circles and I'm glad I finally got a chance read. Three stars in the best possible way.
February 20, 2014
This book is incendiary, a Molotov cocktail lobbed into the unstill and unorganized masses of Black America, urging them to cast off their chains, regain their bodies, their minds, and burn White American Power to the ground. Written in the early 60s in Folsom Prison, Cleaver makes a moral case for Revolution (with a big R) and a tactical case for hatred, for blood&sex&violence joined together to break down everything stultifying and corrupt. The thesis is one third Marx, one third Freud, and one third rage, blended in what a much more modern and less impressive thinker calls "The Ghetto University."
I haven't quite figured out what this book means, more than 40 years on, and what place Cleaver's ideas should have, but damn is it impressive.
I haven't quite figured out what this book means, more than 40 years on, and what place Cleaver's ideas should have, but damn is it impressive.
July 30, 2014
A friend of mine put it best: 'Soul on Ice has some good writing, but Eldridge Cleaver is mostly a f%*#head.'
I did not enjoy reading this book. For reasons I can't quite finger, I wanted to actually tell Cleaver to shut the f*%# up at several points during my reading of this.
Soul On Ice raises an important question, though: can we accept 'wisdom,' from a rape-o shitbird, can we find universal truth in his ranting?
My answer is a tentative yes.
I did not enjoy reading this book. For reasons I can't quite finger, I wanted to actually tell Cleaver to shut the f*%# up at several points during my reading of this.
Soul On Ice raises an important question, though: can we accept 'wisdom,' from a rape-o shitbird, can we find universal truth in his ranting?
My answer is a tentative yes.
July 26, 2023
A serial rapist attempts to shift blame for his misogynoir and homophobia while seldom making good points in 242 pages of unapologetic awfulness.
January 8, 2022
While doing prison time on a marijuana possession charge in the mid 1960s, Eldridge Cleaver wrote a series of letters and essays. By 1970, he had become a recognizable figure in the urban guerilla movement known as the Black Panthers and so these writings were collected and published as Soul on Ice. Readers with knowledge of Cleaver’s biography may be surprised at how nuanced some of his writing is. Then again, they might not be. A lot of readers in our age have little sense of nuance and often allow their knowledge of the author’s moral shortcomings to overshadow the meaning of these essays as they stand. Even worse, some readers use Cleaver’s essays as a stepping stone to express their own self-righteous moral outrage, using it as a vehicle for grandstanding and virtue signalling without taking into consideration anything that Soul on Ice actually says.
This collection is organized into four sections. The first deals primarily with Eldridge Cleaver’s life in Folsom Prison with, regrettably, no references to Johnny Cash. It opens with an introductory essay, “On Becoming”, in which he effectively sets the tone for all the writing that comes after. He states the purpose of his writing is for self-reflection, using his prison sentence to come to terms with the mistakes he made in his youth, all the while offering commentary on the white power structure that contributed to his disgruntlement with American society. You might say that this essay is friendly in tone, maybe even humble. Cleaver draws you in by sounding like a gentle person who got misguided in life.
Then this passage comes almost out of nowhere: “I became a rapist...Rape was an insurrectionary act. It delighted me that I was trampling upon the white man’s law, his system of values, and that I was defiling his women...I was getting revenge.” These thoughts, spread over two paragraphs hit the reader like a stink bomb of nuclear proportions. In fact, it hits so hard that it permanently clouds the judgment of some readers, so much so that they can not read, with any degree of accuracy, most of what comes later in this book. In fact, their judgment is sometimes so clouded, sometimes deliberately for the sake of puffing up their own sense of superiority, that they completely ignore the next paragraph which marks both a transition point in the essay and a transition point in Cleaver’s thinking. Says the author, “I took a long look at myself...and admitted that I was wrong, that I had gone astray – astray not so much from the white man’s law as from being human, civilized...” The author, at this point, takes responsibility for his own wrongdoings and vows to turn himself around. He admits that he owes this not only to himself but to society as a whole. Readers who are clear-headed and humanistic enough to grasp the meaning of this confession will still often admit that these hard-hitting paragraphs hang like a dark cloud over everything that Cleaver says subsequently throughout the course of Soul on Ice.
In one sense, Cleaver’s confession is a stroke of literary genius. Rarely do passages in essays like this arouse so much curiosity and strong emotion, enough so that the reader feels a strong compulsion to continue reading. Such a bold admission to possibly the worst crime a man can commit demands that it be followed up with bold analysis and even bolder insights. From this point on, the bar for success is set high; it is propped up according to whether Cleaver can deliver the goods by the last line of the last essay.
Other essays in this first section deal more specifically with life in prison. One piece, “The Christ and His Teaching”, stands out above the others, not only in this section, but also in the whole book. Cleaver writes about Lovdjieff, a prison teacher who is wildly popular with the inmates and a cause for suspicion with the prison authorities. The fact that Lovdjieff is white seems surprising at first, considering the author’s antagonism to the white power structure, but it soon becomes incidental and a matter of less importance as the essay progresses. Cleaver feels a deep bond with Lovdjieff, not just because of the teacher’s passion for knowledge but more specifically for his ability to get the author to see his life situation from multiple perspectives. At the crux of the matter is the life of Thomas Merton, a theologian who renounced material wealth to live in a monastery, dedicating his life to God. To Cleaver, this monastic life and vow of poverty looks insane; to him it looks like life in a ghetto only the imprisonment and poverty in a monk’s cell are voluntary. Cleaver thinks Lovdjieff’s lessons make Merton look like a fool but what is more important is that this forces Cleaver to look at his own prison life in a different light, it forces him to reframe his situation and consider the possibilty that he is wrong in his thinking.
“The Christ and His Teachings” is more than an almost stylistically perfect essay in the way it introduces themes, points, counterpoints, and gives the reader just enough information to lead them to the main point without overstating the case. It stands out among Cleaver’s other writings because it so directly points to the heart of his thinking. It demonstrates that not only can a person change by stepping outside themselves and re-thinking the way they are, but entire societies can do the same. The purpose of the teacher, and of effective leadership, is to catalyze this process, set it in motion, liquidate fossilized ideas, and the more sincere the teacher is, the more effective their results will be with their pupils.
The carry-over of this theme of transformation being instigated by a teacher can be easily seen in the essays on Malcolm X. As is well-known, after Malcolm X went on the hajj in Mecca, he left the Nation of Islam, converted to Orthodox Sunni Islam, and renounced racism while publicly acknowledging that he would work with white people to end injustice against non-whites. While this was a controversial move that fractured the loyalties of African-American activists at the time, Cleaver writes in full support of Malcolm X’s decision, holding him up as an example for the direction society can go in the process of integration.
The chapters dealing with life in prison are the best in this collection. They are personal and self-probing, creating a clear picture of where Eldridge Cleaver stands at this point in his life. He does an effective job of rallying the reader to his side. The caveat is that, being a prisoner and one that acknowledges his guilt in the crimes he committed, he appears to be deliberately portraying himself in the most sympathetic light he possibly can. Cleaver does come across as sincere, and he probably is, but he might leave you wondering how deeply into his own moral convictions he actually went.
Aside from the section of letters Cleaver exchanges with his attorney, the rest of Soul on Ice attempts to be less personal, addressing broader and more theoretical social issues concerning white supremacy and the oppressive power structure of government and big business. Many of his ideas are naive, being broad abstractions and over-generalizations. With his shift from focus on the individual to the structures of institutionalized racism, a lot gets lost. The idea of individuals as participants in a society much larger than themselves does not get effectively connected to the broader abstract theories he proposes. There is no data to support his theories, but to be fair, Cleaver was not a social scientist and he does effectively communicate a world view, even if it is a rudimentary one at best. Some of his ideas are certainly plausible, but his arguments lack supporting evidence. On the other hand, some of his ideas, particularly in regards to gender, are questionable.
“The Primevel Mitosis” is by far the oddest and most off-putting essay in this collection. It is formulaically logical while its contents are mostly absurd. Drawing on tightly-wound Hegelian logic, the politics of the Sexual Revolution, and the Nation of Islam’s myth of Yacub, the scientist who unleashed evil on the world by creating white people in a laboratory, Cleaver argues that white men are all brain and no body, black men are all body and no brain, white women are some vaguely defined essence of pure femininity, and black women, along with homosexuals, are a hopelessly confused mish-mash of gender roles. The bizarre reasoning behind this does not need to be analyzed in depth to be dismissed. But what is most troublesome is not how misogynistic, homophobic, and shockingly racist against African-American women it is, but rather how it justifies raping white women as a tactic of political activism. At the start of this book, Cleaver denounces that idea and action as a mistake of his youth but he reasserts it here by saying that it is necessary for black men to have sex with white women for racial progress to be made. While he is advocating consensual interracial sex over rape, and there is certainly nothing wrong with interracial sex unless you are a bigot, the idea that white women can be utilized as tools for the sake of harming and disempowering white men should be regarded with suspicion. Towards the end of this book we can see how Cleaver has shifted from rape to consensual sex without actually altering the flawed philosophy that underlied his motivations to commit that crime in the first place. On top of that, while interracial relationships certainly can go a long way in eliminating racism, interracial sex is not a panacea that will magically eliminate inequality on a large scale. Cleaver is advocating a fetish, not a plan of political action.
On a brighter note, in “Convalescence”, as well as comments in other essays, Cleaver addresses the issue of white people “appropriating” African-American culture. He mentions the likes of Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Elvis Presley, and The Beatles; all of these are currently whipping-boys for the anti-appropriation crowd these days, but like Lovdjieff, Eldridge Cleaver would insist that these people look at their beliefs from another angle. Cleaver DEFENDS these white people for borrowing Black people’s culture. In his era, white people were not hearing pleas from African-Americans for racial equality but they were hearing their music. It would also make sense that white people would accept other white people who encourage integration simply because they are of the same peer group. What those writers and musicians did, according to Cleaver, was making it possible for white people to see that Black people have a legitimate point of view; they have something that can benefit all races and bring people together. Jack Kerouac and The Beatles, without being explicitly political, sent the message that it is acceptable for Black people to be themselves and that it is acceptable for white people to appreciate that. While Cleaver acknowledges that their borrowing of cultural elements and styles from Black people is superficial and even corny, he makes jokes about how silly white people look when they dance to Black music, he also demonstrates how they were opening a doorway, allowing white people of all races to interact in the same physical space. These cultural icons are like Lovdjieff and Malcolm X, catalyzing change and making people reorient the frameworks they use to perceive the world.
Getting back to his opening essay and the statement about rape that hangs like a dark cloud over everything else in Soul on Ice, we have to consider whether Eldridge Cleaver lived up to the task he set himself with that statement. Aside from it being a painful confession for him to make, did he succeed in effectively using his writing to re-evaluate his life, taking responsibility, and making changes for the better? In the end, I can meet him half way and say he got off to a good start but leaves a lot to be desired. His self-reflection comes across most effectively in the chapters on prison life and the essays drop in qualoty as they go on. He shifts away to writing about larger social issues that effect him personally but take the spotlight farther away from himself than it should be. While he expresses the need to end segregation and usher in a new era of social equality, even proposing a means of doing so through interaction in social spaces surrounding popular culture, he never sufficiently addresses the question of why he, the individual man named Eldridge Cleaver, saw rape as a legitimate form of expression. He never answers the question he poses to himself. He may have done this in his private life, thinking it was too personal to publish, and he does start off with an apology and a promise to be a better person, but on a literary level, he owes it to the reader to address the issue in some detail since he brought it up in the first place. By the end, it looks like his analysis of white injustice is a way of avoiding responsibility for the crime of rape that he committed. This obviously not the impression he wanted to make.
While not all of the essays in Soul on Ice are great, there are a few high points that make it a vital work of literature. His own life is another matter. After getting kicked out of the Black Panthers for wanting to escalate violent revolution while they were more concerned with free breakfast programs for children and helping African-American people get jobs, he went from one cultish group to another, becoming a Moonie, a Mormon, and finally a republican. He even tried to start his own sect called The Church of the Sacred Sperm; sounding too much like something out of a John Waters movie, it predictably went nowhere. He also invented the penis pants. If you don’t know about them, look them up online. This is the life of a man who felt lost in the world, struggling and failing to find a place to belong. His homophobia, his emphasis on hypermasculinity, and his obsession with his own penis are easy to laugh at, but there is something horribly sad about all that. He was overcompensating for feelings of weakness and vulnerability. While he blames white society for his rage and eccentricities, and in some senses this is justifiable, he had deeper personal issues that never got addressed. I’ve met a lot of troubled people in my life and I see certain patterns; I find myself wondering if Cleaver was sexually abused as a child. When Allen Ginsberg said, “I saw the greatest minds of my generation destroyed by madness”, he could very well have been talking about Eldridge Cleaver. He was a tragic figure and the biggest tragedy is that he never got the help he needed.
Soul on Ice has definite strengths and weaknesses. The strengths outweigh the weaknesses, especially in Eldridge Cleaver’s ability to express his anger, his hopes, and his confusion with a precise and rigid clarity. You can see his demons and angels fighting a brutal war even when he is not directly writing about himself. Like the heroes and idols he portrays in this book, he gets you to re-evaluate the way you think. Even if you don’t appreciate what he has to say, this book is a valuable historical document for students of African-American history, the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, and the countercultures of the 1960s.
https://grimhistory.blogspot.com/
This collection is organized into four sections. The first deals primarily with Eldridge Cleaver’s life in Folsom Prison with, regrettably, no references to Johnny Cash. It opens with an introductory essay, “On Becoming”, in which he effectively sets the tone for all the writing that comes after. He states the purpose of his writing is for self-reflection, using his prison sentence to come to terms with the mistakes he made in his youth, all the while offering commentary on the white power structure that contributed to his disgruntlement with American society. You might say that this essay is friendly in tone, maybe even humble. Cleaver draws you in by sounding like a gentle person who got misguided in life.
Then this passage comes almost out of nowhere: “I became a rapist...Rape was an insurrectionary act. It delighted me that I was trampling upon the white man’s law, his system of values, and that I was defiling his women...I was getting revenge.” These thoughts, spread over two paragraphs hit the reader like a stink bomb of nuclear proportions. In fact, it hits so hard that it permanently clouds the judgment of some readers, so much so that they can not read, with any degree of accuracy, most of what comes later in this book. In fact, their judgment is sometimes so clouded, sometimes deliberately for the sake of puffing up their own sense of superiority, that they completely ignore the next paragraph which marks both a transition point in the essay and a transition point in Cleaver’s thinking. Says the author, “I took a long look at myself...and admitted that I was wrong, that I had gone astray – astray not so much from the white man’s law as from being human, civilized...” The author, at this point, takes responsibility for his own wrongdoings and vows to turn himself around. He admits that he owes this not only to himself but to society as a whole. Readers who are clear-headed and humanistic enough to grasp the meaning of this confession will still often admit that these hard-hitting paragraphs hang like a dark cloud over everything that Cleaver says subsequently throughout the course of Soul on Ice.
In one sense, Cleaver’s confession is a stroke of literary genius. Rarely do passages in essays like this arouse so much curiosity and strong emotion, enough so that the reader feels a strong compulsion to continue reading. Such a bold admission to possibly the worst crime a man can commit demands that it be followed up with bold analysis and even bolder insights. From this point on, the bar for success is set high; it is propped up according to whether Cleaver can deliver the goods by the last line of the last essay.
Other essays in this first section deal more specifically with life in prison. One piece, “The Christ and His Teaching”, stands out above the others, not only in this section, but also in the whole book. Cleaver writes about Lovdjieff, a prison teacher who is wildly popular with the inmates and a cause for suspicion with the prison authorities. The fact that Lovdjieff is white seems surprising at first, considering the author’s antagonism to the white power structure, but it soon becomes incidental and a matter of less importance as the essay progresses. Cleaver feels a deep bond with Lovdjieff, not just because of the teacher’s passion for knowledge but more specifically for his ability to get the author to see his life situation from multiple perspectives. At the crux of the matter is the life of Thomas Merton, a theologian who renounced material wealth to live in a monastery, dedicating his life to God. To Cleaver, this monastic life and vow of poverty looks insane; to him it looks like life in a ghetto only the imprisonment and poverty in a monk’s cell are voluntary. Cleaver thinks Lovdjieff’s lessons make Merton look like a fool but what is more important is that this forces Cleaver to look at his own prison life in a different light, it forces him to reframe his situation and consider the possibilty that he is wrong in his thinking.
“The Christ and His Teachings” is more than an almost stylistically perfect essay in the way it introduces themes, points, counterpoints, and gives the reader just enough information to lead them to the main point without overstating the case. It stands out among Cleaver’s other writings because it so directly points to the heart of his thinking. It demonstrates that not only can a person change by stepping outside themselves and re-thinking the way they are, but entire societies can do the same. The purpose of the teacher, and of effective leadership, is to catalyze this process, set it in motion, liquidate fossilized ideas, and the more sincere the teacher is, the more effective their results will be with their pupils.
The carry-over of this theme of transformation being instigated by a teacher can be easily seen in the essays on Malcolm X. As is well-known, after Malcolm X went on the hajj in Mecca, he left the Nation of Islam, converted to Orthodox Sunni Islam, and renounced racism while publicly acknowledging that he would work with white people to end injustice against non-whites. While this was a controversial move that fractured the loyalties of African-American activists at the time, Cleaver writes in full support of Malcolm X’s decision, holding him up as an example for the direction society can go in the process of integration.
The chapters dealing with life in prison are the best in this collection. They are personal and self-probing, creating a clear picture of where Eldridge Cleaver stands at this point in his life. He does an effective job of rallying the reader to his side. The caveat is that, being a prisoner and one that acknowledges his guilt in the crimes he committed, he appears to be deliberately portraying himself in the most sympathetic light he possibly can. Cleaver does come across as sincere, and he probably is, but he might leave you wondering how deeply into his own moral convictions he actually went.
Aside from the section of letters Cleaver exchanges with his attorney, the rest of Soul on Ice attempts to be less personal, addressing broader and more theoretical social issues concerning white supremacy and the oppressive power structure of government and big business. Many of his ideas are naive, being broad abstractions and over-generalizations. With his shift from focus on the individual to the structures of institutionalized racism, a lot gets lost. The idea of individuals as participants in a society much larger than themselves does not get effectively connected to the broader abstract theories he proposes. There is no data to support his theories, but to be fair, Cleaver was not a social scientist and he does effectively communicate a world view, even if it is a rudimentary one at best. Some of his ideas are certainly plausible, but his arguments lack supporting evidence. On the other hand, some of his ideas, particularly in regards to gender, are questionable.
“The Primevel Mitosis” is by far the oddest and most off-putting essay in this collection. It is formulaically logical while its contents are mostly absurd. Drawing on tightly-wound Hegelian logic, the politics of the Sexual Revolution, and the Nation of Islam’s myth of Yacub, the scientist who unleashed evil on the world by creating white people in a laboratory, Cleaver argues that white men are all brain and no body, black men are all body and no brain, white women are some vaguely defined essence of pure femininity, and black women, along with homosexuals, are a hopelessly confused mish-mash of gender roles. The bizarre reasoning behind this does not need to be analyzed in depth to be dismissed. But what is most troublesome is not how misogynistic, homophobic, and shockingly racist against African-American women it is, but rather how it justifies raping white women as a tactic of political activism. At the start of this book, Cleaver denounces that idea and action as a mistake of his youth but he reasserts it here by saying that it is necessary for black men to have sex with white women for racial progress to be made. While he is advocating consensual interracial sex over rape, and there is certainly nothing wrong with interracial sex unless you are a bigot, the idea that white women can be utilized as tools for the sake of harming and disempowering white men should be regarded with suspicion. Towards the end of this book we can see how Cleaver has shifted from rape to consensual sex without actually altering the flawed philosophy that underlied his motivations to commit that crime in the first place. On top of that, while interracial relationships certainly can go a long way in eliminating racism, interracial sex is not a panacea that will magically eliminate inequality on a large scale. Cleaver is advocating a fetish, not a plan of political action.
On a brighter note, in “Convalescence”, as well as comments in other essays, Cleaver addresses the issue of white people “appropriating” African-American culture. He mentions the likes of Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Elvis Presley, and The Beatles; all of these are currently whipping-boys for the anti-appropriation crowd these days, but like Lovdjieff, Eldridge Cleaver would insist that these people look at their beliefs from another angle. Cleaver DEFENDS these white people for borrowing Black people’s culture. In his era, white people were not hearing pleas from African-Americans for racial equality but they were hearing their music. It would also make sense that white people would accept other white people who encourage integration simply because they are of the same peer group. What those writers and musicians did, according to Cleaver, was making it possible for white people to see that Black people have a legitimate point of view; they have something that can benefit all races and bring people together. Jack Kerouac and The Beatles, without being explicitly political, sent the message that it is acceptable for Black people to be themselves and that it is acceptable for white people to appreciate that. While Cleaver acknowledges that their borrowing of cultural elements and styles from Black people is superficial and even corny, he makes jokes about how silly white people look when they dance to Black music, he also demonstrates how they were opening a doorway, allowing white people of all races to interact in the same physical space. These cultural icons are like Lovdjieff and Malcolm X, catalyzing change and making people reorient the frameworks they use to perceive the world.
Getting back to his opening essay and the statement about rape that hangs like a dark cloud over everything else in Soul on Ice, we have to consider whether Eldridge Cleaver lived up to the task he set himself with that statement. Aside from it being a painful confession for him to make, did he succeed in effectively using his writing to re-evaluate his life, taking responsibility, and making changes for the better? In the end, I can meet him half way and say he got off to a good start but leaves a lot to be desired. His self-reflection comes across most effectively in the chapters on prison life and the essays drop in qualoty as they go on. He shifts away to writing about larger social issues that effect him personally but take the spotlight farther away from himself than it should be. While he expresses the need to end segregation and usher in a new era of social equality, even proposing a means of doing so through interaction in social spaces surrounding popular culture, he never sufficiently addresses the question of why he, the individual man named Eldridge Cleaver, saw rape as a legitimate form of expression. He never answers the question he poses to himself. He may have done this in his private life, thinking it was too personal to publish, and he does start off with an apology and a promise to be a better person, but on a literary level, he owes it to the reader to address the issue in some detail since he brought it up in the first place. By the end, it looks like his analysis of white injustice is a way of avoiding responsibility for the crime of rape that he committed. This obviously not the impression he wanted to make.
While not all of the essays in Soul on Ice are great, there are a few high points that make it a vital work of literature. His own life is another matter. After getting kicked out of the Black Panthers for wanting to escalate violent revolution while they were more concerned with free breakfast programs for children and helping African-American people get jobs, he went from one cultish group to another, becoming a Moonie, a Mormon, and finally a republican. He even tried to start his own sect called The Church of the Sacred Sperm; sounding too much like something out of a John Waters movie, it predictably went nowhere. He also invented the penis pants. If you don’t know about them, look them up online. This is the life of a man who felt lost in the world, struggling and failing to find a place to belong. His homophobia, his emphasis on hypermasculinity, and his obsession with his own penis are easy to laugh at, but there is something horribly sad about all that. He was overcompensating for feelings of weakness and vulnerability. While he blames white society for his rage and eccentricities, and in some senses this is justifiable, he had deeper personal issues that never got addressed. I’ve met a lot of troubled people in my life and I see certain patterns; I find myself wondering if Cleaver was sexually abused as a child. When Allen Ginsberg said, “I saw the greatest minds of my generation destroyed by madness”, he could very well have been talking about Eldridge Cleaver. He was a tragic figure and the biggest tragedy is that he never got the help he needed.
Soul on Ice has definite strengths and weaknesses. The strengths outweigh the weaknesses, especially in Eldridge Cleaver’s ability to express his anger, his hopes, and his confusion with a precise and rigid clarity. You can see his demons and angels fighting a brutal war even when he is not directly writing about himself. Like the heroes and idols he portrays in this book, he gets you to re-evaluate the way you think. Even if you don’t appreciate what he has to say, this book is a valuable historical document for students of African-American history, the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, and the countercultures of the 1960s.
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