The Nigger Factory by Gil Scott-Heron

 

It’s an incendiary title, but that’s just because it’s making an angry political point about the state of education for black Americans at the time the book was written – it was first published in 1972. This is helpfully summed up in a foreword, which begins “Black colleges and universities have been both a blessing and a curse on black people”, and continues in this vein, making sure that the complexity of the situation is described straight from the start. The plot revolves around a group of students at Sutton University who are agitating for change. What’s interesting is that the divisions amongst the students are often more prominent than their differences with the faculty. The story of student politics with escalating consequences works very well as a period piece, but the dialect used for speech can be jarring in 2010. The students’ slang consistently appears odd, with phrases like "Keep drivin’ an’ talkin’” or “Can you dig that?” having been parodied so much that they can seem very awkward. If you can get past that, you’ll find this a well-paced book which keeps you reading, and gets you thinking. [Johnny Chess]