[Jonathan Rieder] The Word of the Lord Is Upon Me : The Righteous Performance of Martin Luther King, Jr.(pdf){Zzzzz}[BЯ]

"You don't know me," Martin Luther King, Jr., once declared to those who criticized his denunciation of the Vietnam War, who wanted to confine him to the ghetto of "black" issues. Now, forty years after being felled by an assassin's bullet, it is still difficult to take the measure of the man: apostle of peace or angry prophet; sublime exponent of a beloved community or fiery Moses leading his people up from bondage; black preacher or translator of blackness to the white world?This book explores the extraordinary performances through which King played with all of these possibilities, and others too, blending and gliding in and out of idioms and identities. Taking us deep into King's backstage discussions with colleagues, his preaching to black congregations, his exhortations in mass meetings, and his crossover addresses to whites, Jonathan Rieder tells a powerful story about the tangle of race, talk, and identity in the life of one of America's greatest moral and political leaders.A brilliant interpretive endeavor grounded in the sociology of culture, "The Word of the Lord Is Upon Me" delves into the intricacies of King's sermons, speeches, storytelling, exhortations, jokes, jeremiads, taunts, repartee, eulogies, confessions, lamentation, and gallows humor, as well as the author's interviews with members of King's inner circle. The King who emerges is a distinctively modern figure who, in straddling the boundaries of diverse traditions, ultimately transcended them all.

Product Description
Review
Sociologist Rieder has produced a careful reading of Martin Luther King Jr.'s many speaking styles. Pulling together his backstage talk with black comrades, sermons, speeches in the mass rallies of the Civil Rights Movement, writings, and major public addresses, Rieder shows King's tremendous skill in weaving together many different kinds of sources into the right form for each audience. The author argues against the view that King was authentic when speaking in a black idiom to a black audience, but artfully accommodating when using "white material" before a white audience. Instead, Rieder shows that King drew easily on black folk expressions, highbrow theology, the Founding Fathers, gospel music, and, especially, the rich language of the Bible to express himself genuinely before all kinds of audiences. This book is especially valuable in comparing written versus spoken versions of the same sermons and speeches, and versions given before predominantly white and black audiences. Rieder
About the Author
Jonathan Rieder is Professor of Sociology at Barnard College, Columbia University.

Publisher: Harvard University Press (22 April 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0674028228
ISBN-13: 978-0674028227