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BOOK REVIEW          BOND

things black, discredit the militant heroes and heroines black Amer-icans have produced, make mockery of their programs of struggle, keep them from uniting in struggle, argue that you can't work with them because they are extremists; above all prevent the unity of black and white and label its advocates Communists.
  Carter is one of the new ideologists speaking for those in power.  He stands alongside of William Styron, author of The Confessions of Nat Turner.  Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South is part of the ideological weapons being handed to the white masses.  It proves one thing: the ruling class is both desperate and ruthless but the heroic black youth whose lives were warped and twisted in Scotts-boro added a page to the history of this country that will help the liberation fighters of today.

WILLIAM L. PATTERSON

DISAPPOINTING NOVEL FOR TEEN-AGERS

THE SOUL BROTHERS AND SISTER LOU.  By Kristin Hunter. Charles Scribner's Sons. 248 pages. $3.95

THERE ARE PAINFULLY few teen-age stories on the market relevant to the circumstances and emotions of the average black youngster.  How many of us stumbled through adolescence on a starvation diet of animal adventures and paintbox summers?  Kristin Hunter has made a valiant attempt to help fill this yawning gap and has succeeded on some counts, especially in the view of the Council on Interracial Books for Children which gave her their 1968 Annual Award for the best book by an Afro-American for teen-agers.
  Miss Hunter has a lively imagination and solid ability to invest her work with a self-propelling quality that prevents the action from seeming artificially determined.  The tale of Louretta Hawkins' lonely contention with the process of growing up amid many and varied hostilities moves at a sure pace from the alley where Lou tries to be included in a group of sometimey boys, to the clubhouse she and her big brother help them acquire, to a rumble with the police that is fatal to one of the gang, and finally to the formation of a rock-and-roll group called "The Soul Brothers and Sister Lou."
  However, Miss Hunter has one very serious problem as a writer.  There is a persistent tone of condescension in her narrative style which must spring from her unfamiliarity with and, worse, basic insensitivity to the people about whom she chooses to write.  That is to say, her perspective on the ghetto environment appears class-

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