 First edition cover | |
| Author | Eldridge Cleaver |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Prison memoir |
| Publisher | McGraw-Hill |
Publication date | 1968 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (hardcover,paperback) |
| Pages | 210 pp |
| ISBN | 0070113076 |
Soul on Ice is a book of essays and letters written byEldridge Cleaver while he was serving time inSan Quentin State Prison andFolsom State Prison. His writings first appeared inRamparts magazine in 1966, and were collected in book form inSoul on Ice, published byMcGraw-Hill in 1968.[1] Although the book ranges over many topics, it is usually classified as a memoir because much of it is a retelling of Cleaver's life, how he came to be in prison, and the evolution of his religious beliefs and radical politics.
Soul on Ice was widely read and discussed for its searing commentary on white society in America, and the black experience within it.[2][3] The book was highly controversial, and subject to censorship, for its provocative statements and opinions. The author was hailed as "an authentic voice of black rage in a white-ruled world."[4]The New York Times namedSoul on Ice one of the 10 best books of 1968.[4]
By autumn of 1970, two million copies were in print.[5] Cleaver went on to publish other writings, butSoul on Ice remains his best-known work and a seminal volume inAfrican-American literature.
Eldridge Cleaver was born in August 1935 inWabbaseka, Arkansas, at a time when pernicious racism prevailed in the segregatedSouth. In 1946, his family moved toWatts, California, where he began engaging in petty crime.[6] After a series of arrests for bicycle theft and vandalism, he was sent in 1954 toSoledad State Prison for possessing a large quantity of marijuana.[7][8] During this stretch in prison, he earned a high school diploma while reading the works ofNiccolò Machiavelli,Voltaire,Jean-Jacques Rousseau,Thomas Paine,Karl Marx,Vladimir Lenin,W. E. B. Du Bois,Richard Wright,Thomas Merton, andThomas Wolfe.[8][9][10]
In 1957, Cleaver was released from Soledad. Later that year, he was convicted of sexual assault with intent to murder. He was sent to San Quentin and then transferred to Folsom. He began to write regularly about his physical and mental imprisonment, his personal transformation, and the political events and cultural happenings of the era.[11]
In 1965, he sent a letter to Beverly Axelrod, aBay Area-based attorney, asking her to represent him. She agreed and their relationship proved instrumental in the publication ofSoul on Ice. When she visited him in prison, she smuggled him contraband leftist books and magazines, and he slipped his prison essays into the stacks of legal papers she carried with her.[12][13]
She showed his essays toEdward Michael Keating, founder ofRamparts magazine, who began publishing them in June 1966.[14] After Cleaver wasparoled in December 1966, he was hired as aRamparts staff writer in theirSan Francisco office.[6] He also joined the fledglingBlack Panther Party inOakland.[15] His prison writings, a number of which had already appeared inRamparts, were collected in the volumeSoul on Ice, and published by McGraw-Hill in early 1968.
The essays inSoul on Ice are divided into four thematic sections:[16]
In the Introduction,Maxwell Geismar likensSoul on Ice toFrantz Fanon'sBlack Skin, White Masks, stating that in both books, "the central problem is ofidentification as a black soul which has been 'colonized' ... by an oppressive white society that projects its brief, narrow vision of life as eternal truth."[17] Geismar especially praises the last portion ofSoul on Ice where the author "has reached his own spiritual convalescence, his healed spirit (no longer racist or narrowly nationalist), and his mature power as a writer".[18]
Cleaver immediately courts controversy in the opening essay, "On Becoming". He describes his realization as a young man that he had been "indoctrinated to see the white woman as more beautiful and desirable than my own black woman."[19] In the wake of the 1955 lynching in Mississippi ofEmmett Till for allegedly flirting with a white woman, Cleaver says he developed an "antagonistic, ruthless attitude toward white women" that he acted upon when released from prison in 1957:
I became a rapist. To refine my technique andmodus operandi, I started out by practicing on black girls in the ghetto—in the black ghetto where dark and vicious deeds appear not as aberrations or deviations from the norm, but as part of the sufficiency of the Evil of a day—and when I considered myself smooth enough, I crossed the tracks and sought out white prey. I did this consciously, deliberately, willfully, methodically—though looking back I see that I was in a frantic, wild, and completely abandoned frame of mind. Rape was an insurrectionary act. It delighted me that I was defying and trampling upon the white man's law, upon his system of values, and that I was defiling his women—and this point, I believe, was the most satisfying to me because I was very resentful over the historical fact of how the white man has used the black woman. I felt I was getting revenge.[20][21]
In a spirit of confession, he soon adds:
After I returned to prison, I took a long look at myself and, for the first time in my life, 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—for I could not approve the act of rape. Even though I had some insight into my own motivations, I did not feel justified. I lost my self-respect. My pride as a man dissolved and my whole fragile moral structure seemed to collapse, completely shattered. That is why I started to write. To save myself.[22]
In the essay, "The White Race and Its Heroes", he mentions how he was inspired by the current generation of white youths who were battling racism in the South and thereby commanding his respect: "If a man likeMalcolm X could change and repudiate racism, if I myself and other formerMuslims can change, if young whites can change, then there is hope for America."[23]
In the book's other essays, he navigates through the history and present state of his country. He covers areas such as therace riots occurring in U.S. cities; the murders of Malcolm X and Emmett Till; theVietnam War,U.S. foreign policy and theAmerican Flag;Muhammad Ali,Martin Luther King Jr. and other black notables of the 1960s;Richard Wright'sNative Son;Islam andChristianity; day-to-day prison life; and the nature of black manhood.
Cleaver sparked controversy with his essay "Notes on a Native Son", which is ahomophobic criticism of the writings of authorJames Baldwin.[24] In an article inAfrican American Review, Zachary Manditch-Prottas called Cleaver's attack on Baldwin "the most notorious and frequently cited example of homophobia in theBlack Power era."[25] In her 1979 bookBlack Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman,black feminist authorMichele Wallace singled out Cleaver'sSoul on Ice for reinforcing the harmful "blackmacho" stereotype.[26][27]
Soon after its publication,Soul on Ice was banned from certain school libraries for its references tomiscegenation.[28]
It was later one of eleven books involved in the 1982 U.S. Supreme Court case,Island Trees School District v. Pico. The targeted books were removed from high school and junior high school libraries by the Board of Education of theIsland Trees Union Free School District in New York for being "anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, and just plain filthy".[29]
