Book Review: Losing My Cool by Thomas Chatterton Williams

 

There has never been a time in my life that I believed that there was anything good in the Hip-Hop lifestyle.  I have always believed that Hip-Hop was a destructive force, not only in the lives of black youth in general, but also in the black community as a whole.  I have blogged about it many times, and frequently thought I was more or less alone in my view. 

 

I wasn’t.

 

When TLC book tours invited to participate in a review of Thomas Chatterton Williams’ new book, I was excited from the outset!  The title, Losing My Cool: How a Father’s Love and 15,000 books Beat Hip-Hop Culture immediately grabbed me by the collar and said “read me!”  So, I couldn’t pass it up.

 

Thomas Chatterton Williams spent his youth in an accute identity crisis.  He needed to understand or at least find a place where he fit-in.  As the son of a black father and a white mother, was raised in a mostly-white, middle class area of Scotch Plains, he needed a sense of belonging, and he found it at the local barber shop, and from music videos on Black Entertainment Television.   At an early age, Mr. Williams began his campaign of “keeping it real”. 

 

The big problem facing the author, and so many other young black men and women was this:  He had become convinced by the culture that he had to “keep it real“, It’s that simple.  “Keeping it real” was more important that anything else.  “Keeping it real” meant giving allegiance to hip hop’s filthy grasp.  “Keeping it real” meant subscribing to the nonsensical notion that hip hop culture is synonymous with black culture.  “Keeping it real” meant that a person had to dress a certain way, talk a certain way, and act a certain way… generally speaking, like some sort of thug or prison inmate.

 

Before we start tsk-tsking and shaking our heads, let’s hang on for a second… because young Mr. Williams’ story isn’t one of the demise of another young black man.  It is a story of victory.  The victory of a loving family; the victory of a gentle, caring mother; the victory of a self-educated, steadfast father who believed in education above all things.

 

The author was fortunate to have such a family.  His father’s dedication to learning and insistence that his son study constantly resulted in acceptance to Georgetown University, where the author earned a degree in philosophy.  Not that his time at Georgetown was simplicity in itself.  No, indeed.  While at Georgetown, the author remained involved in the hip hop lifestyle and might have remained immersed in it had he not been exposed to some new friends and new ways of living.

 

At the end of the day, learning and exposure to a better life broke the chains of the hip hop life and allowed the author to be free. 

 

Free.

 

Freedom is important, isn’t it?  As an American, and especially as an African American, I put a lot importance on that word… and so does the author.  Let me share a quote from the book:

 

“Since the dawn of the hip-hop era in the 1970s, black people have become increasingly freer and freer as individuals, with a wider range of possibilities spread out before us now than at any time in our past. Yet the circumstances of our collective life have degenerated in direct contrast to this fact, with a more impoverished vision of what it means to be black today than ever before. If these exciting new circumstances we now find ourselves in, of which our president is the apotheosis, are to mean anything of lasting value, the zeitgeist… is going to have to change…

Will we, at long last, allow ourselves to abandon the instinct to self-sabotage and the narcissistic glorification of our own failure? Will the fact of daily exposure to a black president in turn expose once and for all the lie that is and always has been keeping it real?”

 

Thomas Chatterton Williams is a free man who has a lot on his mind, and I believe we will be hearing a lot more from him.   He writes with feeling and deep passion.  I look forward to hearing what this young man has to say.

Read this book, you will be glad you did.

 

 

Note:   Although I received a complimentary copy of this book from TLC Book Tours, it didn't influence my review... I hope that you know me well enough to know that I don't roll like that.