Brother West by Cornel West Read Free Book Online

the smallest sign of an asthma problem, I was not tempted to abandon the love ethos of Christianity for voodooist practices. I did, however, see myself moving in a more ecumenical direction. I began to understand that answers to problems— physical, emotional, and spiritual—often require enquiries that go beyond the confines of a narrow dogma.
    As to why the conjuring worked, I still have no idea.
    O UR SUMMERS IN T EXAS AND O KLAHOMA were important times. These were, after all, the territories of my immediate origin, places where the countrified nature of my people—and of me—was nurtured. Just as much as California, Texas, and Oklahoma represented home.
    The home of Grandma Lovie in Tulsa was especially impressive. As a result of her catering skill, she was a good earner who put her money into interior décor. Her house was immaculate. The silver was polished, the linen freshly laundered, her upholstered furniture spotless. I loved being there. Grandma gave me a feeling of well-being, not only because her beautifully appointed home offered security—the security that results from achievement against all odds—but because she was also deeply charitable. She fed the poor and cared for the downtrodden.
    Yet she was also stern. When, for example, I disobeyed her by climbing a tree in her backyard and breaking a branch, she angered quickly.
    “Get me a switch from the tree, boy.”
    She took the switch and struck me. As the blow came down, I turned. That’s when Grandma Lovie inadvertently caught the side of my eye with the switch. It stung like crazy and left a permanent scar. If I had turned a fraction of an inch more, I might have lost the eye. Grandma Lovie cried out in remorse. “Lord Jesus!” she said, “I didn’t mean to do that.” For the rest of my life she never stopped apologizing.
    C OACH COULDN ’ T STOP APOLOGIZING . I understand that it wasn’t his fault, but, on some fundamental level, I remained shocked. This is another childhood blow that became clear years later. I’ll explain in a minute.
    I was barely a teen. I was committed, like Brother Cliff, to becoming a champion runner. I was swept up by the Shiloh Baptist sermons of Reverend Cooke. I was swept up by the sounds of Jr. Walker’s “Shotgun.” I was slow-dancing with the girls to Barbara Mason’s “Yes, I’m Ready” and Smokey Robinson’s “Choosey Beggar.” In fact, some of the girls told me I looked a little like Smokey. I was also into Arthur Schopenhauer, the German thinker born 220 years ago who said that art was more important than reason or logic in understanding life. Man, I related. I knew that Marvin Gaye’s “Stubborn Kind of Fellow” was more than just a song. When the Impressions sang about “Keep on Pushing” and “People Get Ready,” their words, like Schopenhauer’s or Kierkegaard’s, resonated deep within me. When Mom and Dad had taken us to hear Martin Luther King, Jr. speak at Sacramento’s Memorial Auditorium—that was back in 1963 when I was ten—I was spellbound. I felt him. I felt it . I felt the rhythm of righteous speech. He was, like a song, pushing us on.
    Early at Will C. Wood Junior High, the teachers were pushing me on. While I made the varsity baseball team as a seventh grader and won the Inspirational Trophy in football, I also was reading biographies of Albert Einstein and fell in love with the fact that, for all his scientific brilliance, he played the violin. Just for the heck of it, I started writing books. At twelve, I wrote a 250-page history of Canada. At thirteen, I wrote a 180-page history of Mexico City. These were not books of any insight or analysis. They were simple accumulations of facts placed in chronological order and rendered in storytelling form.
    I was running, running, running.
    “You were running so hard,” Cliff recently reminded me, “that you once got into my stash. I’m not sure I was such a good role model for you, Corn. I might have had Dad’s cool, but