he is
what it is.The recipient of numerous awards, Barlow has a
wife, Barbara, and two children, Erin and Mark.
Barlow is a member of the English and American
studies faculties at Grinnell College.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Aptheker, Herbert. American Negro Slave Revolts.
New ed. New York: International Publishers, 1974,
219–226.
Redmond, Eugene. Drumvoices: The Mission of Afro-
American Poetry, A Critical History. Garden City,
N.Y.: Anchor Press, 1976.
Wilfred D. Samuels
Beatty, Paul (1962– )
Once described by ISHMAEL REED as possessing
“the guts and verve of a Tiger Woods on paper,”
the poet and novelist Paul Beatty, who fuses ref-
erences to elite, hip-hop, and street cultures with
equal dexterity, has elicited high praise from liter-
ary peers and critics alike. Beatty, who was born in
Los Angeles in 1962, earned his advance degrees
in the east—an M.F.A. in creative writing from
Brooklyn College and an M.A. in psychology from
Boston University.
In his first published volume of poetry, Big
Bank Take Little Bank (1991), Beatty displayed the
facility with language, humor, and incisive cultural
observations that have become his hallmark. In
the poem “Darryl Strawberry Asleep in a Field of
Dreams,” he comments on America’s favorite pas-
time, baseball, while raising larger questions about
the uneven nature of the country’s euphemistic
playing fields: “is this heaven / no its iowa / is this
heaven / no its harlem /... / do they got a team /
aint sure they got dreams / damn sure aint got a
field / or crops that yield.”
Beatty’s second collection, Joker, Joker Deuce
(1994) includes such titles as “Big Bowls of Cereal”
and “Verbal Mugging.” In the latter, the writer, who
is also a performance artist, shares his observations
on how to play the performance poetry game suc-
cessfully. In “About the Author,” one of his most
scathingly satirical pieces, he dares to imagine the
iconic MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., caught up in the
celebrity endorsement game that has ensnared
other vaunted figures: “this is mlk... yes suh /
i thank god i wear air integrationists / crossover
trainers by nike / hallelujah.” Virtually nothing is
sacred within Beatty’s literary world.
While the critical responses to Beatty’s po-
etry have been strong, his novels have generated
even higher levels of praise. His first, The White
Boy Shuffle (1996), features protagonist Gunnar
Kaufman, an African American with some of the
most embarrassing yet comical ancestors in black
literary history. Among them are a freeborn cho-
reographer who dances his way into slavery, a ser-
vant so dedicated to his master that no one has the
heart to tell him that his master has died, and a
music promoter who only handles white Motown
wannabes. When Gunnar’s mother realizes that
her children consider themselves different from
inner-city black youths, she moves them from pre-
dominantly white Santa Monica to a tough section
of Los Angeles. There the book-smart, former sub-
urbanite struggles to fit in until he asserts his po-
etic voice, learns he has a jump shot, and by novel’s
end becomes a reluctant messiah for his people.
All of this occurs as he is surrounded by an
outlandish cast of friends (including a fellow bas-
ketball player who worships Mishima) and an-
tagonists (such as young, black sexual terrorists
Betty and Veronica) who are also trying to find a
place for themselves in a world in which difference
is generally a liability. Richard Bernstein of the
New York Times declared Beatty to be “a fertile and
original writer, one to watch” (25).
Tuff, Beatty’s second novel (2000), received a
similarly glowing reception. Its male protagonist
is 19-year-old, 320-pound Winston “Tuffy” Fos-
hay, whose run for city council allows the always
acerbic Beatty to pick apart every aspect of poli-
tics, from voter apathy to campaign strategies. Yet
he ends this novel on a hopeful note. Again, his
protagonist lives in a world populated with a vari-
ety of over-the-top characters. Still, even some of
those who applaud Beatty’s brilliance believe the
best is yet to come from this young writer. Reed,38 Beatty, Paul