The Last Plantation: A Memoir of Race, Conflict, and Healing

by Itabari Njeri

In the 1980s, when most Americans considered "black" a racial reference, many multiracial people began to see themselves as part of a heterogeneous ethnic group linked by history, culture, and blood -... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0395771919
• ISBN13: 9780395771914
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 308 Pages
• Weight: 1.14 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.0" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Title correction and updated reviews

The title you use for this book is incorrect. The correct title is: The Last Plantation:Color, Conflict, and Identity--Reflections of a New World Black. (The title you use was on the uncorrected galleys, not the published book.) You also misspell the author's name upon second reference. The correct spelling is Itabari NjeriThe reviews you use are mostly prepublication ones, instead of the major post-publication reviews: The Washington Post (4/6/97), The Village Voice Literary Supplement (Summer, 1997); The Los Angeles Times (6/15/97). Excerpts from these reviews follow: "Going her own way, Njeri brings intellectual sobriety, wit and pathos to the intricacies of her subject, creating a layered combination of memoir, first-class investigative reporting and social meditation....The Last Plantation is more than a little important."--The Los Angeles Times"Itabari Njeri plunges into the chaos of multiculturalism. What she comes up with is brave, messy, brilliant,and caustic. A dispatch from the outer limits of the country's internecine race wars, the book reads as an enlightened take on our national obsession. It might be the most idiosyncratic interrogation of race and identity issues in American life since Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man."--Village Voice Literary Supplement"The combination of Njeri's melliflouous writing, keen powers of observation and journalisltic skill marks this work as one that will stand the test of time." The Washington PostFinally, in an advance review from Kirkus (1/1/97): "In a disgressive but illuminating book that is an ambitious blend of reportage, memoir, and social commentary, Njeri seeks a redemptive reconfiguration of American's racial self-concept.... Njeri's eclectic perspective is unsettling. But regardless of where individual Americans place themselves on the spectrum of race, culture, identity, and politics, following this writer through the discomfort her views may prompt offers a new path to seeing this country clearly and its increasingly diverse citizens as a vibrant, human whole."