[.uk] Soul on Ice (ISBN 038533379X)

decent writer, bad man...:
people consider this to be 'in the world of literature' and serious? cleaver's a misogynistic pig, a racist, and a multiple rapist. that's all you need to know.

Sad, Revolutionary, and Incindiary at the same time,:
Mr. Cleaver wrote a semiautobiography about how society sets itself up along racial and gender lines. Raping women is reprehensible and evil and it doesn't help solve the racial/gender problem. It excabates it. Challenging the racist/sexist society by making alliances with people whom he considered to be his enemies will solve most of the problem. He should have shown love for his fellow man/woman. Didn't Jesus tell people to love your enemies, not hating and violating them? Later on in life, his views have changed for the better.

He right, even now.:
The themes exhibited in "Soul On Ice" are race, racism, individuality vs. societal standards and traditions, injustice, humanity, religion/faith, inhumanity and activism. Cleaver spends a great deal of time writing on the injustices Black people face in America, and how even though he is what society wants him to be, it is his fault that he allow society to be right. He pledges to take steps towards change and to become a benefit to society. I know that a lot of people think that they know about the civil rights movement and the effects it had on the Black race, but they don't. This story of a man who, at the time, had been locked up for more than half of his life, is the story of all real Black people. I think that sometimes Black people do things and think that it is their nature, which is how stereotypes brew. Cleaver shows us that it is history and hatred that have made us a collective in an usual individual world. We do think for ourselves, yet a racist society continues to force us to travel down a road that we have not set for ourselves, and that he has fell into racist America's trap. He has become the stereotype: (supposedly) uneducated, a prisoner, and a victim of "The Ogre" (the white woman).

Being Honest:
One must remember, this man is a convict, sent to prison for attempted murder. If you understand the mind of the incarcerated then you know it is all a front for parole. Once Cleaver was released from prison he proceed to get involved with more criminal activity both in the United States and abroad. In France he is suspected of the murder of a man that had an affair with his wife. In Algeria he ran a auto theft ring. Does this sounds like the re-incarnation of Malcolm X. Or does it sound like the a street thug. The fact that he became a crack addicted whore towards the end of his life renouncing the Black Panther attest to the fact that Eldridge Cleaver was a phoney only hustling the system to get out of jail. I read his book and essentially was bored. I had no desire to experience life behind bars as white critics and so-call academics do.

Lost for words:
After reading this book I believe trying to articulate in writing "what my opinion" is would be doing it an injustice. The man is brilliant and has influenced me to search for more knowledge and wisdom. Thanks Mr. Cleaver!