Description: In Bebe Moore Campbell's Brothers and Sisters, Humphrey Boone is offered a seemingly wonderful deal by his job interviewer: "If you accept my offer and do the job that I believe you're capable of, I'll groom you for the presidency." A generous offer indeed until one realizes that for a black man, the capabilities to which the interviewer refers include such factors as being self-effacing, conforming one's speech to "clipped enunciation and perfect diction," and above all stifling any attraction to a white woman.
Brief description: James Robert Saunders is a professor of English at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana.
Review Quotes: "A sobering study...his topic is vital, his readings are sound"--MultiCultural Review; "examines the challenges faced by blacks working in predominantly white corporations, through the perspective of African American writers who have chronicled the struggle"--Reference & Research Book News.