Remembering Reet and Shine : two black men, one struggle / Michael Schwalbe.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Schwalbe, Michael, 1956-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Mason, Matthew, 1911-2002.

Mason, Matthew.

Atwater, Anthony, 1933-2000.

Atwater, Anthony.

African American men--Southern States--Biography.

African American men.

African Americans--Southern States--Biography.

African Americans.

African American men--Southern States--Social conditions--20th century.

African Americans--Southern States--Social conditions--20th century.

Social conditions.

Southern States--Race relations.

Southern States.

Race relations.

Southern States--Biography.

Carrboro (N.C.)--Biography.

Carrboro (N.C.).

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xi, 252 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, [2004]

Summary:

Matthew Mason and Anthony Atwater were two ordinary men and four extraordinary characters. As working-class African Americans who grew up in the American South, Mason and Atwater struggled to live authentic lives and earn respect as men, while being caught between the demands of their families and the dominant white world in which they had to survive. Like other black men of their era, Mason and Atwater created personas as a means to cope with this problem of double consciousness. Matthew Mason became known as Dr. Reet, a witty entertainer to his white employers. Anthony Atwater became Shine, a streetwise stud who was skilled in love and violence. Each man's persona, what seemed like a solution at one time, came back to haunt him later.

Grandson of a slave and born to a share-cropping family in 1911, Mason worked for fifty years for an all-white aristocratic fraternity, though most of his children would go on to professional careers. Atwater, born in 1933, showed great promise as a child and had ambitions to be an engineer, but by middle age had brought himself close to ruin. In trying to cope with the strains of their lives, both men struggled with alcoholism, eventually emerging from years of emotional turmoil to find peace in old age. Mixing biography, memoir, and journalism, Remembering Reet and Shine delves into the southern past, following Mason and Atwater as they age, decline, and die. It also explores the great contradiction of American manhood that arises between the expectation of control and the reality of powerlessness. This moving account does not herald heroes or saints, but raises the profile of ordinary men trying to reconcile the demands of manhood with the limits imposed by social forces beyond their control.

Contents:

Room to be human

Driving Mr. Mason

Spoiling for manhood

From halves to a piece of earth

A bubble off center

The making of Dr. Reet

A fine man in his right mind

Home again

Can't do like you used to

Getting turned around

Mudslide

Two old birds holding on.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

1578066751

OCLC:

54759448