The Washington Post - USA (2022-05-17)

TUESDAY, MAY 17 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE C3

fictional? In short, would they “rather die

charging like a rhino than bleating like a

goat,” or will absolute panic set in and the

lions be reduced to the kittens of Holly-

wood?

In his writing, Bohjalian is anything

but a kitten. Lesser writers could not

tackle 10 narrators, the complexities of

racism in America, African politics, vio-

lence both foreign and domestic (as in

inside a New York apartment) and make

the pieces fit seamlessly together. But

Bohjalian — whose books include “Hour

of the Witch” and “The Flight Attendant”

— has shown time and again that with

him, you don’t know what you’re going to

get, but you know that the getting is good.

With “The Lioness,” the getting is vio-

lently good. Pulled in by the promise of

thrills or the guarantee of glamour, read-

ers will stay for the game of survivor(s),

and finish the book as satisfied as a fat cat

in the Serengeti.

Karin Tanabe is the author of five books,

including, most recently, “A Woman of

Intelligence.”

(The book has already been optioned for a

television series.) And make no mistake,

there will be blood. As Katie puts it, saying

the safari had taken a wrong turn “was like

saying Jack Kennedy’s visit to Dallas had

had a few hiccups.”

For some, the horror becomes the hun-

ger games. As in, the actual animals are

hungry and human flesh will do just fine.

For others, driven through the endless

plains, then tied up alone, it becomes

trying to figure out who the kidnappers

are, if they’ll keep them alive for ransom,

and of course, why?

Set against the backdrop of the Congo

Crisis and the Simba rebellion, while also

touching on American racism, especially

in Hollywood, there are so many reasons

the famous group could have been cap-

tured, and the unraveling of it all is capti-

vating. But even more so is how a group of

such prominent people react when

they’ve landed in hell, and the reason

behind their reactions. What did their

lives look like before this moment? Are

they acting the hero? Or can they not play

that card when tragedy is real instead of

BY PEGGY MCGLONE

At the start of his prolific and influen-
tial career, photographer Gordon Parks
documented everyday life in D.C., in-
cluding events and students at Howard
University.
Eighty years later, the historically
Black university in the heart of the
District has acquired one of the most
comprehensive collections of Parks’s
photographs. The trove of 252 images
represents both his artistic achievement
and his significance as a documentarian
of African American life in the second
half of the 20th century. Parks died in
2006 at the age of 93.
The Gordon Parks Legacy Collection
will be housed in the university’s Moor-
land-Spingarn Research Center, where
students and faculty — from history,
African American studies and the arts —
can access the images for classwork,
research, exhibitions and public pro-
grams.
The acquisition raises the profile of
the university and will lead to impor-
tant research and exhibitions, says
Benjamin Talton, director of the Moor-
land-Spingarn Research Center. The
collection, beginning with 1940 s por-
traits of Black residents of Chicago
and Minneapolis and ending with a
1990 portrait of Spike Lee, is an
important addition to an archive that
includes materials from Amiri Baraka,
Mary Frances Berry, Paul Robeson and
Frederick Douglass.
“Gordon Parks was part of the begin-
ning of telling the story of African
American life, and bringing humanity to
that story,” Talton said. “Howard Uni-
versity is at the center of the African
American experience globally. Obvious-
ly Black life meant something to Gordon
Parks. It’s a foot in a shoe, and I think
he’d be pleased.”
The photographs were specifically
chosen by university and Gordon Parks
Foundation staff for their educational
value from thousands that the founda-
tion owns, explained Peter W. Kunhardt
Jr., executive director of the foundation.
A combination purchase and gift (the
financial details were not disclosed), the
acquisition marks the start of a partner-
ship that will be celebrated May 19 at the
foundation’s annual awards dinner in
New York.
“The arc of this collection is looking
at Black pride. It chronicles his career in
a way that is accessible to students,”
Kunhardt said. “He’s not just a portrait-
ist. He’s a humanitarian. He was using
his camera to show poverty and despair.
His pictures could be tough, but they
told a story.”
Born in Fort Scott, Kan., Parks did
not finish high school and had no
formal training in photography. He
began documenting African American
life in the 1940s, including a stint in
Washington in 1942, when he worked
for the Farm Security Administration.
Some of his photographs of the city
from this period are included in the
acquisition.
He captured daily life in the Jim
Crow South and in neighborhoods in
Harlem, Chicago and Washington. He
worked as a fashion photographer for
Vogue and Ebony magazines, and in
1948 he was hired by Life magazine,
where he spent two decades producing
landmark photo essays that focused
on race, poverty and the struggle for
civil rights.
Parks photographed major artists
and civil rights leaders, including Sid-
ney Poitier, Duke Ellington, Malcolm X,
Stokely Carmichael and Miles Davis. He
also wrote books, composed music and
was the first African American to direct
a major movie, 1969’s “The Learning
Tree.” His 1971 movie, “Shaft,” launched
a genre of Black film.
Parks gave more than 200 photo-
graphs to the Corcoran Gallery of Art in
1998, the year after the private museum
presented an acclaimed retrospective of
his career. Most of the images were
featured in that exhibition; they are now
at the National Gallery of Art. Parks also
donated photographs, movies, manu-
scripts and musical compositions to the
Library of Congress.
The Howard acquisition builds on
these collections, Talton said.
“They are not just photographs,
they are studies. Gordon Parks im-
mersed himself in Chicago, in Harlem,
in Washington, in Rio de Janeiro,”
Talton said. “It is about the art, but it is
about Gordon Parks the person. It’s
about technique, and light and angles,
but also about dropping into the
second half of the 20th century.”

Gordon Parks’s expansive chronicle

of Black life comes to Howard

PHOTOS BY GORDON PARKS/THE GORDON PARKS FOUNDATION

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: A view from the March on Washington

in 1963; artist Margaret Burroughs circa 1946; Duke Ellington in

concert in 1960; and Marian Anderson at the 1943 dedication of a

mural in the U.S. Interior Department building commemorating

the 1939 outdoor concert she gave at the Lincoln Memorial.

power of wildebeests crossing the Mara

River and the beauty of giraffes at a water-

ing hole. But very quickly, the cameras are

dropped. White men in a Land Rover

appear out of nowhere. There are gun-

shots, and it’s perfectly clear that they’re

not aiming at the giraffes.

The armed men are ruthless Russian

mercenaries. In minutes, they brutally

kidnap the Americans and their guides,

one violently murdered, the rest muscled

into trucks with guns to their heads. The

mantra for all becomes: “Just stay alive.

See if, somehow, we might see the sun rise

one more time.”

As the drama plays out, Bohjalian di-

vides the narration between all nine

Americans and Benjamin Kikwete, one of

the group’s young Kenyan porters. Ten

narrators is a bold choice, and readers will

whom Katie has shared some steamy big-
screen scenes. Terrance is only the third
Black guest that the safari team has led,
and is as much of a star to the staff in
Tanzania as Katie.
They’re all in the care of Charlie Patton, a
White hunter who holds fast to his machis-
mo, his handlebar mustache, and the fact
that he once had Papa Hemingway as a
client. But he’ll put down the guns, realiz-
ing that it’s the Hollywood crowd that will
fill his pockets now, even if they’re people
ready to “photograph elephants, not shoot
them. People who might want a zebra rug
or a zebra purse but didn’t want to see the
damn thing actually killed.”
And so it begins. The travelers are
learning from the guides, witnessing the

BOOK WORLD FROM C1

Buckle up for the latest novel

from ‘Flight Attendant’ author

need the who’s who list provided, but

when you’re writing your 23rd book,

shouldn’t your choices be bold? The gag-

gle of narrators means that no one has

enough page time for deep character de-

velopment, but what’s there is rich

enough to be revelatory, is expertly woven

into the present, and the short chapters

and changing cast are what turns “The

Lioness” into a bloody sprint of a read.

VICTORIA BLEWER

“The Lioness” author Chris Bohjalian