What am I reading?
Ekow Eshun’s Black Gold of the Sun: Searching for Home in England and Africa, (Penguin, 2006) lent to me by Anne Douglas.
“When I eventually bought a copy of his book I realized how prophetic DuBois had been. Mannered tones aside, The Souls of Black Folk could have been written at the end of the twentieth century instead of its dawn. With his description of double consciousness, Dubois became the first writer to articulate the sensibility of black people born into the white world. He was also the first to argue that, far from being a drawback, our dual gaze was a blessing. It meant that we regarded life with an acuity white people could never muster. We watched for the bigotry cloaked in humour and the hesitations of speech that betrayed hostility. We used double consciousness to survive, and ultimately thrive, in the white world.”
p. 214-215
“The images had faded over time, so that, on one plate, only a pair of eyes was visible.”
p. 123
CHRIS FREMANTLE 
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