i hear a symphony
African Americans Celebrate Love

By Paula L. Woods & Felix H. Liddell
Anchor Books (1994)
$30.00 334 pages
Reviewed by J. Douglas Allen-Taylor

Like most African-Americans, my family history is full of stories of legendary love.

Around the turn of the century, Tom Reid presented his beloved, Jenny Parker, with alternative proposals. Live with me in San Francisco, he said. It's a wild, wonderful life of bars, gambling dens, and boxing matches. I can make much money, we'll live high and fine with furs and wine, and you'll be the Black Queen of the Barbary Coast. Or, if you want, he said, we can give up the good life and move across the Bay to the country. I can get myself a regular job. We can raise a family. We won't be rich, but we'll live as Christians, and we'll have each other. Whatever you want to do is fine, my dear, just as long as you agree to marry me. Jenny Parker chose the country, and poverty, and the Christian life. Tom and Jenny produced 13 children, 11 of whom lived to adulthood, one of whom was my mother. Tom Reid worked mule-hard for the rest of his life, sometimes in factories, often double-shift, to pay the rent and put food on the table. One Depression evening he came home sick and exhausted from work, kissed my grandmother goodbye, lay down in his bed, and died. Jenny never remarried.

With such examples to look to in my own family, I don't have to be convinced of how deep and strong African-Americans are capable of loving.

It's a good thing, too, because there's not much evidence of such epic and abiding love in the way African-Americans are portrayed in American popular culture outlets. Looking at the average Rikki Lake Show or an evening of BET videos, you'd think we were a race of doggish misfits, oh-so well hung rapists and woman-beaters and freakish, big-tittied booty-shakers. Lustful, yes. Love-ful? Well, you wouldn't think so, not from the way they show us, or from the way we too often present ourselves.

In such a negative atmosphere, it was a great and timely idea for marriage partners and marketing consultants Paula L. Woods and Felix H. Liddell to create "i hear a symphony," a collection of writings on the many facets of love in the African-American community. That the book does not always hit the heights it so ambitiously shoots for should not dim its luster. The authors' hearts seem to be in the right place, and that says a lot in these times.

"symphony" is divided into seven areas, from self-love/spirituality to love of family and friends to, of course, romantic love. It's contributors range from best-selling contemporary authors to famous leaders to folks you've never heard of before.

Where the collection works the writing will take your breath away--like an adolescent's first sweetheart kiss. Or just make you feel warm and good. Or cause you to blink back angry tears, such as those caused by Elizabeth Keckley's account of her parents' forced separation in the 1830's:

"Mr. Burwell came to the cabin, with a letter in his hand. ... He...as gently as possible informed my parents that they must part; for in two hours my father must join his master at Dinwiddie, and go with him to the West. ... Deep as was the distress of my mother in parting with my father, her sorrow did not screen her from insult. My old mistress said to her: '...Your husband is not the only slave that has been sold from his family, and you are not the only one that has had to part. There are plenty more men about here, and if you want a husband so badly, stop your crying and go and find another.' ... My father and mother never met again in this world. They kept up a regular correspondence for years, and the most precious momentoes of my existence are the faded old letters that he wrote, full of love, and always hoping that the future would bring brighter days."

Such accounts force us to remember that for many years of our existence in this country, African-American family love was maintained only against great odds.

There are other gems: James Baldwin's famous letter of advice to African-American youth, Duke Ellington's perspectives on race consciousness, Mary McLeod Bethune's last testament, selections from Dr. Charles Drew's beautiful love letters to his wife, Peter J. Harris' jazz-riff on male bonding, Nikki Finney's moving portrait of her mother's strength and courage, W.E.B. DuBois' quiet, mournful account of the death of his first-born son, and some excellent poetry. These make the book worth the price of admission.

But where the collection doesn't work, well, there's a lot of wasted space. The section on spiritual love is oddly weak and dispirited, an awfully big problem when talking about African-Americans. Some of the writings--especially some of the letters of private citizens--are pretty bland and pointless. Some of the work by big-name and kinda-big-name authors (Terry McMillan and Eddy L. Harris, to name a couple) is particularly weak. And if all that could be included of Toni Morrison was a section of her Nobel Laureate speech, she shouldn't have been in the mix at all.

But "symphony" is a gorgeous enough book that you might be able to overlook its many problems: creamy pages and richly colorful artwork. And every few pages you run into passages like Jill Nelson's description of the insular, close-knit African-American community of Martha's Vineyard:

"The wonderful thing about the Vineyard is that most everyone believes you're going to do well, though sometimes they're not quite sure in what or when, or maybe it is that they don't care. It's what is expected, what everyone before you did and after you will do. If the black summer community on Martha's Vineyard forms its own world, it is a world absent the assumptions of inferiority rife elsewhere. It is, I think, the absence of burden of carrying around both the negative assumptions of others, and my own. On the Vineyard, as the old spiritual goes, I can lay my burdens down."

Sounds like the kind of place you'd like to take your children.