<div dir="ltr"><div>All,</div><div>Please find below and attached Michele Schiavone's review of Emily Ruth Rutter, <i>Invisible Ball of Dreams</i>.</div><div>Thanks</div><div>Duncan</div><div><br></div><div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"">Rutter, Emily Ruth. <i>Invisible
Ball of Dreams: Literary Representations of Baseball behind the Color Line</i>.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif""><span> </span>Jackson: U of Mississippi
P, 2018. 190 pp. Notes, Works Cited, Index. </p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"">Reviewed by Michele Schiavone, Professor Emerita, Marshall University</p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif""><span> </span>In
<i>Invisible Ball of Dreams</i>, African
American literature scholar Emily Ruth Rutter analyzes fiction, drama, poetry,
film, and children’s books relating to black baseball through the lens of
archival theory. She claims in the Introduction that “[t]he dissolution of
black baseball may have gone relatively unnoticed at the time, but the specter
of the segregated past continues to haunt the national pastime and the
literature that engages it” (2). This is a thoroughly researched and engaging
book that not only enlightens us about the literature and the culture of black
baseball, but also, by using the theory of the archive and archival erasures,
establishes a basis for new and exciting research in other areas. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif""><span> </span>First,
I need to say I am not an entirely objective reviewer--Rutter’s topic has long
been one of my own interests. I had already read most of the primary texts she
deals with; I’ve given presentations on Negro League-related literature and issues
of race at various conferences, including those of the Sport Literature
Association; and I once had a vague dream of writing a book along these lines. <span> </span>On the upside, my familiarity with all but a
couple of the texts analyzed here allows me to say that Rutter handles them
with skill and sensitivity, while enhancing my understanding of the texts in
the context of Negro League literature as a whole. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif""><span> </span>Rutter’s
introduction establishes the concept of the archive and its importance to our
perceptions. Citing Derrida, Diana Taylor and Wendy Walters as scholars who
have looked at archives critically, she explains that archives are not
objective, as someone has decided what is worth recording and archiving. The
most basic example of this in relation to black baseball is the lack of
reliable statistics. Several reasons account for this lack, but, as Rutter
claims, many black baseball statistics have been erased by whites, who
controlled the archives. But she is concerned with more than statistics; she is
also troubled by the erasure of the black baseball <i>experience, </i>and thus examines<i>
</i>works from successive waves of Negro League literature, arguing that
“imaginative literature plays a key role in redressing these archival erasures”
(2). However, the literature, as Rutter points out, also reflects the dominant
culture of the time, “often express[ing] the biases that remain entrenched in
baseball and the country for which it stands” (9). </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif""><span> </span>For
example, William Brashler’s 1973 novel, <i>The
Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings, </i>in<i> </i>depicting a Negro League baseball team and basing some of the main
characters on prominent Negro Leaguers, has doubtless introduced readers to an
unfamiliar era in baseball history. <span> </span>But this
70s novel, in Rutter’s view, overemphasizes “comedic, spectacular aspects of
black baseball” and perpetuates “degrading stock tropes such as the ‘magical
negro.’” (10). This weakness is common in the first wave of Negro League
literature, which was written by whites. <span> </span>Also part of the first wave are Jay
Neugeboren’s <i>Sam’s Legacy</i> (1974), John
Craig’s <i>Chappie and Me</i> (1979), and Jerome
Charyn’s <i>The Seventh Babe</i> (1979), all
of which subordinate black characters to white ones. <span> </span>Rutter argues that these writers “mine
significant gaps in archival knowledge” but also “elid[e] and/or misrepresent.
. . many lived experiences” (19). </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:200%;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"">The second wave of
Negro League literature encompasses African American writers of the 1980s and
90s, such as August Wilson (<i>Fences</i>),
Gloria Naylor (<i>Bailey’s Café</i>) and
poetry by Michael S. Harper, Quincy Troupe, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Harmony
Holiday. <span> </span>Rutter begins her section on
the second wave by quoting Amiri Baraka on the “laughter and self-love” engendered
by watching the Newark Eagles play.<span> </span>She
claims that <i>Fences</i> fills the gaps in
the archive in terms of both statistics and feelings of what it was like to
play baseball and of what it felt like to be excluded and passed over. <span> </span>Rutter also explains the connection between
Negro League baseball and African American music, specifically jazz and blues,
and how they are linked in works such as Quincy Troupe’s “Poem for My Father”
and Komunyakaa’s “Glory.” <span> </span>She writes,
“without the specter of the white gaze, communities such as the one “Glory”
depicts constructed their own identities, and baseball . . . played an integral
role in opposing dominant narratives of black inferiority” (99). In his poem “Archives,”
Michael S. Harper deals with the gaps in the Baseball Hall of Fame’s archives,
in terms of both artifacts and the emotions of the lived experience of black
baseball, and suggests that poetry is one of the modes of documentation
“necessary in order to reimagine this richly variegated past” (101). <span> </span>Rutter’s section on Harmony Holiday’s
collection <i>Negro League Baseball</i>
looks at the ways Holiday “mov[es] literary representations of black baseball,
as well as the homologies with blues and jazz, in new and provocative
directions” (102). Holiday’s poetry, which I was not previously familiar with,
is difficult.<span> </span>I noticed that, for the
most part, the quotations from Holiday did not accurately duplicate the poet’s unconventional
spacing, but Rutter does a great job of making Holiday’s work intelligible. <span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif""><span> </span>The
third wave contains works by both white and African American writers, including
the novels <i>The Veracruz Blues</i> (1996)
by Mark Winegardner and <i>All the Stars
Came Out That Night</i> (2005) by Kevin King, and children’s books on black
baseball. Winegardner’s novel, about the Mexican League active in the 1940s,
and King’s, about a secret game played between Negro Leaguers and major
leaguers in the 1930s, “call attention to the power structures that have
historically wielded control over what is included and excluded from the annals
and vaults of the national pastime” (109). The novels “dispel a unilateral view
of the past” by “incorporating metafictional techniques . . . and polyvocal
narration” (109). <span> </span>The children’s books
that Rutter takes up teach young readers not only about black baseball, but
also about black ingenuity in the face of segregation. After summarizing a few
children’s books that place Negro Leaguers in mentor roles, Rutter focuses on
works that have strong visual components: <i>A
Negro League Scrapbook</i>, <i>We Are the
Ship</i>, and the graphic novel <i>Satchel
Paige</i>. Carole Boston Weatherford uses rhymed couplets in <i>A Negro League Scrapbook</i> to help young
readers remember black baseball; she also includes information and photos of
the three women who played in the Negro Leagues. In <i>We Are the Ship, </i>for which<i> </i>Kadir
Nelson did the illustrations as well as wrote the text, Nelson not only
introduces children to the giants of Negro League baseball, but <a name="_GoBack"></a>he debunks some misconceptions about baseball and black
athletes (for example, that they are only physical and have no mental ability).
<span> </span>Nelson also has mentoring in mind, as he
“pursues a dialogic relationship with readers that mimics a father sharing this
history with his son or daughter” (144). In <i>Satchel
Paige</i>, James Sturm and Rick Tommaso make it clear that they are teaching--
about Paige’s baseball feats and his attitude, about the sociocultural
background, and about fathers as mentors.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:200%;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif""><span> </span>In the book’s last section, “Coda,” Rutter
examines Denzel Washington’s 2016 film version of Wilson’s <i>Fences</i>. She writes, “the film leans into the complex emotional
residue that the Negro Leagues left behind, portraying both segregation and
integration as freighted with unresolved frustration and loss” (160). This
“emotional residue” brings us back to the reason Rutter gives for writing her
book.<span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%;margin:0in 0in 8pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif""><span> </span><i>Invisible Ball of Dreams </i>is the ideal
scholarly work. Sophisticated in its analysis and use of archival theory, it is
nonetheless accessible to students working with primary texts. While reminding
readers of the many first-rate literary works related to black baseball, Rutter’s
book also brings out the human component underlying the terms “segregation” and
“integration.” </p>
</div><div><br></div><div><div><div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">Remember to smell the roses as you recumber past<br><br>Duncan R. Jamieson, Ph. D.<br>Professor of History<br>Book Review Editor<br><i>AETHLON: The Journal of Sport Literature</i><br>Ashland University<br>Ashland, OH 44805<br>USA<br></div></div></div></div></div>