I was definitely disgusted by Cleaver’s homophobia for one thing he equated homosexuality to child-rape, which is ridiculous.

The inclusion of these letters seemed so surreal to me, yet they appear to have been very heartfelt. The book also includes some love letters he wrote to his lawyer, a woman who represented several of the Black Panthers. It is a deep hole out of which to climb.”Ībout American ghettos he says “In this huge cauldron, inestimable natural gifts, wisdom, love, music, science, poetry are stamped down and left to boil with the dregs of an elementally corrupted nature, and thousands upon thousands of souls are destroyed by vice and misery and degradation, obliterated, wiped out, washed from the register of the living, dehumanized.” “Individuality is not nourished in prison, neither by the officials nor by the convicts. However, the language he uses in this section isn’t one of a lunatic but one of an eloquent man, which is disturbing in itself.Ĭleaver's prison essays were the most poignant to me, as were his analyses of the living situation of blacks in America: Cleaver is very candid about the rapes he “practiced” (that was the expression he used) on black women in order to ultimately rape white women, an act which he saw as being revolutionary. The first couple of essays absolutely shocked me.

And you know it’s important to read this book as Cleaver was such a pivotal player in the Civil Rights movement.

Cleaver’s views are so old-fashioned, homophobic, and misogynistic and, at times, slightly crazy, but it’s impossible to ignore his masterful use of the language, as well as his unique vantage point of the American race crisis. I now know more about Eldridge Cleaver through his collection of short essays, covering diverse topics such as Muhammed Ali, Malcolm X, the sexual politics of race, war and politics, from Soul on Ice.Ĭleaver’s writing is extremely infuriating yet it’s hard to stop reading. This book is one of the several books I planned on reading to help fill in some of the woeful gaps in my knowledge of the Civil Rights movement.

Soul on ice eldridge cleaver book