Black Empire (New England Library Of Black Literature) by George S. Schuyler

Black Empire (New England Library Of Black Literature) Reviews

• 
  Cat

  I’ve got to get it out of the way and admit that I don’t really like this book. Admittedly, reading it as a “book” is the first step in distorting the narrative experience because this is a collection of columns that satirist
  George S. Schuyler published in the Pittsburgh Courier in the late 1930s under the pseudonym Samuel I. Brooks. He was dashing them off week after week, and the Courier audience was gobbling them up. To read a whole volume of them at once is to experience unrelentingly the repetitive plot devices, political dooms-saying, and appeals to shock value, which means, basically, that this gets boring, even though it seems like pulp science-fiction (done in a semi-parody) should be the most gobble-worthy scholarly reading on the planet.
  
  And from the scholar’s vantagepoint, I want to say that the editors did a great job. This material is laid out in a readable, clear way, and they are very precise about the changes that they made for editorial consistency (choosing one spelling of a character’s name, etc.), and the inconsistencies that they kept in there to stay true to what Schuyler wrote (even if he sometimes didn’t stay true to what he had written in previous weeks—presumably he wrote in a headlong rush and never looked back). Also, their essay at the end, which examines his contradictory views about racial essentialism and race-as-a-construct, not to mention about back-to-Africa movements (Marcus Garvey) and black internationalism, and which presents important historical context (the Italian invasion of Ethiopia) and contemporaneous intertexts (pulp science fiction), is basically a model for the genre. They educate their reader and enrich their understanding of the text that came before, with thorough notes and a strong sense of Schuyler’s variegated periodical output. Also helpful for the scholar who wants to know Schuyler’s pseudonymous work but isn’t going to fall down the rabbit hole of the archives to do it, they present a list of his pieces written under this pseudonym for the Pittsburgh Courier, accompanied by pithy synopses.
  
  The actual book (or, really, two books, as two narratives, Black Internationale and Black Empire were serialized in the Courier) is totally fascinating, even as I found it difficult to read in the long sitting in which I read it. Schuyler imagines an anti-hero, Dr. Belsidus, determined to right the wrongs that white people have done to black people over the centuries. He is charismatic, sexually irresistible (based on his ornately decorated love nests and the swooning response of women around her), brilliant, and ruthless. The book opens with our narrator, Slater, witnessing Dr. Belsidus murdering a white lover and then being kidnapped by Belsidus and his cronies, to serve as Belsidus’s personal secretary. In a dazzling case of Stockholm syndrome avant la lettre, Slater seems basically to forget that he was kidnapped and forced into service as he becomes an enthusiastic contributor to the schemes towards global domination undertaken by the Black Internationale, a group that kills all betrayers and dissolves their corpses in an acid bath (really).
  
  Schuyler’s narrative alternates between utopian technological triumphalism (solar power, hydroponic farms, consumer cooperatives, cyclotrons that can conquer enemy airplanes) and international spy intrigue, punctuated by terrorist action. These wild swings in tone (from the technocrats’ hope for a better, more rational civilization to the bloodthirsty search for revenge and world domination) can be unsettling, as the latter is claimed as a way to the former. While Schuyler is critical of Mussolini, it is clear that the specter of fascism fascinated him and appealed to him, as Dr. Belsidus claims unlimited power, and all the sympathetic characters seem to agree that it is best for him to do so.
  
  One of the most fascinating characters is Martha, Belsidus’s white lover, whom he dismisses as another pawn in his grand scheme but who becomes crucial in the plot that follows, particularly to foment conflict in Europe (in order to get the former imperial powers to ignore the Black Internationale’s take-over of Africa). Martha is just as ruthless as her lover, helping with the plot to gas 15,000 technicians for Britain’s munitions factories, shooting a white cop at close range, and assassinating the Prime Minister. But at the end of Black Empire, when Belsidus has experienced his greatest victories, Martha is left weeping, perhaps recognizing that she can never bridge the gap between them, his derisive view of white people. I couldn’t help but think about Schuyler’s white wife, Josephine, and how she might have felt about this dramatization of a white woman who is helping with the battle but who can never be recompensed by the full personal participation of Schuyler in their household and family. (I have her on my mind today, as I read a wonderful chapter about her in Carla Kaplan’s
  Miss Anne in Harlem: The White Women of the Black Renaissance.)
  
  Also, it is so tricky to try to interpret Schuyler’s authorial positioning vis-à-vis the views in this book. This is always hard with Schuyler because he’s deliberately provocative (and later became an arch-conservative, so it’s tricky not to read back his later views onto his earlier views) and a satirist (hence, the reader is forced to play “where’s the irony?” or, perhaps harder, “where’s the sincerity?”). In this pseudonymous fiction, another level of uncertainty comes into play because Schuyler in print was totally dismissive and derisive of what he wrote as Samuel I. Brooks, claiming that he was deliberately playing into his audience’s “racial chauvinism.” At the same time, many of the ideas that he printed under his own name in political columns for the Pittsburgh Courier, show up in this book, particularly in the monologues of Dr. Belsidus.
  
  I don’t like these books, but they are fascinating historical documents, in their longing for a black diasporic political unity, in their depiction of violent revenge against white institutions and individuals, in their flirtation with fascism and their embrace of technological utopianism.
  
• 
  Morgan

  This bizarre collection of George S. Schuyler's serials is at first a madman-takes-over-the-world science fiction story. However, underneath that is a commentary of national and international events: the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, the black-on-black slavery in Liberia, the fomenting war in Europe, Jim Crow and segregation laws in America...I love Black Empire, which is actually 2 collections: the first is Black Internationale: The Story of Black Genius Against the World and Black Empire: An Imaginative Story of a Great New Civilization in Modern Africa. The first tells of Dr. Belsidus's plan and execution in taking over Africa and killing all whites who cross his path; the second tells what happens when Belsidus's plan is realized. Romance, humor, death, betrayal, murder, violence, sex, these serials were way ahead of their time.
• 
  Vika Herrera

  Concept and legacy: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
  Language/writing style (from my vantage point in 2023): ⭐️⭐️⭐️
  Heavy focus on describing infrastructure and battle: ⭐️⭐️
• 
  Kobe Bryant

  You can really tell that it was a serial
• 
  Lauren Nicole

  I guess you can say I kinda finished this book. I finished the first half and skimmed the second. The book was a little too detailed for my taste and I found it difficult to visualize the numerous characters (and keep them all straight).
  
  If I were back in college, I'd comment more on the Martha Gaskin character being the Great White Hope, Dr. Belsidus's views on women, the author's satire on religion, or the Black Internationale's economic regime. But I'm not so I'll just say that the book was, ehh, so-so.
  
  I'm glad I read it though. It's one of those books everyone should at least be somewhat familiar with. I didn't love it, but I didn't hate it either.
• 
  Peter Kerry Powers

  I admit I read this book somewhat dutifully, having written on the Harlem Renaissance extensively in the past, but having not paid a lot of attention to Schuyler beyond some of his shorter works, which I loved, and having only skimmed somewhat cursorily through it before to see how much relevance it might have to my own subject on religion and gender. While a religious organization plays a significant part in the book in establishing a kind of proto-Afrocentric religious experience that may be trying to evoke the religiosity of Marcus Garvey's UNIA organization, I didn't find a lot of substance there and did not pursue the book seriously in the past. I decided to come back to it and give it a second chance. Although I'd like to say it's a major statement of African American letters, it clearly isn't. Other things in Schuyler I find compelling. His shorter work is sharp, he's iconoclastic and acerbic without being merely combative. I don't share his generally conservative political outlook, but he usually made me think hard about what I thought about the Harlem Renaissance and why.
  
  This book not so much. Its worst features are its predictability, so much so that even when it tries to be shocking it is predictably so, and so even it's horrors end up being kind of boring. A kind of black fascist revenge fantasy, the book focuses on a kind of Garveyesque empire-builder, Dr. Belsidus, who is willing to cross any and every ethical boundary in the quest to develop a black empire noted in the title. Belsidus seems to be a type of moral fascist, willing to destroy everything in his path to realize what he recognizes as the greater ultimate good of his vision of a black empire. Although Belsidus seems sometimes to thrust the narrator--who seems to be something of a journalistic stand-in for Schuyler--into moral quandaries, these quandaries are short-lived as the narrator dismisses them in favor of Belsidus's overwhelming and compelling will. One can imagine such a scene result either in forms or moral reckoning or in ironic recognitions of the violence of power and empire building, but the book and its ethics never really ascends to irony or moral complexity, being content to remain within the bounds of a revenge fantasy. It never really ascends beyond that in a way that seems to interrogate racial conflict, white supremacy, black resistance and identities with the complexity they might deserve. On the other hand, it is worth noting that this began as a serialized newspaper fiction, written largely to give his primarily African American readers a source of entertainment and to give himself a weekly paycheck. It reads that way. And so my final feeling that I have done my duty by Schuyler and the Harlem Renaissance to come back and give the book a more serious read. That would be time better spent if it were a more serious book.
• 
  David

  Best known for his provocative 1931 race satire Black No More, Schuyler was a prolific contributor of editorials and serial fiction to the national Black newsweekly The Pittsburgh Courier. A cliff-hanging melodrama of the overthrow of white supremacy by all means necessary, it isn't hard to see why his The Black Internationale and its 1936 sequel Black Empire were both popular in the era of Jim Crow. Ruthless, fanatical Dr. Henry Belsidus is the mastermind of an elaborate scheme to reclaim the African continent and thence achieve global domination by means of futuristic solar energy, hydroponics, and fax machines. Prone to satanic smirks and speechifying, the suave Belsidus is hardly a utopian, unleashing pandemonium via petty thievery, eugenics, death rays, total war, and the eradication of the British upper crust in a concert hall converted into a gas chamber. This moral ambivalence reflects gadfly Schuyler's own deep cynicism but doesn't detract from the lurid, pulpy fun, which includes orgiastic rites, a sexy aviatrix in a golden autogyro, and a trained attack-leopard named Ben. A proto-Afrofuturist potboiler poised between Black Panther and the works of Percival Everett, this fascinating glimpse beyond the Harlem Renaissance canon anticipates Black power and Afrocentrist themes.
• 
  Tim Callicutt

  [3.5 Stars] Dr. Belsidus is a black genius with a simple goal: lead his secret agency, the Black Internationale, in an effort to take back the African continent for the black man. Well... maybe not that simple of a goal.
  
  This is a fascinating piece of writing that best operates as a historical document, particularly when viewed as a critique of black separatism (specifically, the Garveyism that was in vogue at the time). As a novel for enjoyment, the book doesn't quite work as well. Schuyler originally wrote Black Empire as two separate series of columns for the Pittsburgh Courier. Considering that the original audience was reading this in parts from week to week, the pacing is all off. There are so many cliffhangers that they become essentially meaningless. There's exposition all over the place, with heavy doses of repetition. And there is almost a complete lack of tension. When it appears, it is resolved within a couple of pages.
  
  That's not to say there are no redeeming qualities, readability-wise. There are so many creative elements here: the science fiction elements, the basic narrative, and the utter shock value of it all are all points in its favor. However, you can tell that these chapters were meant to be disparate pieces of a larger narrative. Reading them all together is an exercise with significantly diminishing returns.
• 
  Rhonda Hankins

  This book is a compilation of chapters originally published weekly in a newspaper in the 1930s. I bet if you read them back in the day, they were good fun and mind blowing in some ways. Taken as a whole, though, and trying to read this as a book is asking a lot of the reader. This is pulp fiction; reminded me of crazed Get Smart or Austin Powers' villains. Fun in short doses, tedious for a longer read. Also the vitriol is unrelenting and gets to be obnoxious.
  
  Yet this is absolutely a worthwhile book to introduce yourself. I bet if you just read one short chapter a week, it'd be a quite powerful read. But for me this is a loan from the library so that's not a good option and reading it as a book isn't that fun: too much repetition and too much a celebration of hatred.
  
  Oddly, then I'm recommending you check out a book I couldn't read all the way through. Not sure what's up with that.
• 
  Mackenzie

  4.5 stars
  
  This is such a great novel. I am very excited for it be become widely published in January. A great work of science fiction that predicted a lot of the technology and ideas of the future. Schuyler plays around with a lot of theories on race relations and racial power. It was just really fascinating to dive into a lost serialized novel from this author. Highly recommend.
• 
  Ernest Hogan

  The long, lost proto-Afrofuturist/badass sci-fi classic is back in a new edition. It deserves to be an international bestseller, with a movie and graphic novel adaptations. Why aren't people dancing in the streets? Go buy and read it now!
• 
  skwoofwoof

  A must read
• 
  Jonathan Baker

  Absolutely amazing work! If you are Black this is an absolute imperative!
• 
  Matt Sautman

  While the satire does not translate as clearly as Black No More, Black Empire makes for a powerful Afrofuturist inversion of pulp novels in a pre-WW II context.
• 
  HonRevDrStainTruth

  An Afrocentric utopian novel that chronicles the conquest, civilization(sic), and unification of Africa under the leadership of Dr. Henry Belsidus, leader of the underground conspiracy known as the Black Internationale.There is some great super science and many troubling surprises as well! Regardless of what one thinks of Schuyler's politics, Black Empire is unrelenting in its imagining of a different future, and the case for it, Love of super science , administrative utopia, women's rights, seats it clearly with the great revolutionary utopian texts of the early twentieth century. The serial format makes it an action-driven romp as well.
• 
  Michael Burnam-Fink

  An odd book. Basically, evil genius Dr Belsidus decides to exact revenge against Whitey, by building a new Black Empire in Africa. It's totally amoral, focusing of subterfuge, unconventional warfare, and Science! Supposedly, there's a deeper message here, but all I see is second rate Golden Age sci-fi mixed with Black Nationalist paranoia.
• 
  Kristiana

  I read this book a while back. The author originally published it as a seril in a Harlem newspaper in the 30s, so the science fiction is sort of marked by that era. It's interesting in what it addresses about race, as well as an entertaining read.
• 
  Robina

  nowhere near as wickedly brilliant (or as funny!) as schuyler's _black no more_, but definitely worth reading.
• 
  Karla

  First read this about 12 years ago. It remains one of my favorites!