book reviews and summaries, comments, analysis
Morrow, Curtis James What's a Commie ever done to Black People?
A Korean War Memoir DS 921.6 m67 1997
When I first saw the title of this book, I was reminded of a TV interview with Muhammed Ali and his opposition to the Vietnam War. "No Viet Cong ever called me Nigger!," said Ali, challenging the cameras as he always did. Even at that young age (I was only in my early teens at the time) I was impressed with the truth of the statement, but I had an annoying voice in the back of my head that kept asking me, 'yeah, but so what.'
Morrows book is a trenchant (pun intended) description of his experiences in Korea both as a soldier and as a black man. Like many soldiers, he felt a need to exorcise the bad memories. This book is his cathartic. Two parts of the book were of special relevance to me.
One was the mixed feelings he had coming back to his home town and being a hero. He felt uncomfortable with being a sort-of military poster boy. He felt he was being used when he spoke to high schools about the Korean War or the War against communism. Especially bothersome was some "little ol' fat lady recruiter" who came up and told him all the publicity had doubled enlistments.
The other was his incongruous remarks about faggots in the personnel department at Fort Leonard Wood. As a reviewer I will brush this aside as an off-the-cuff remark probably not indicative of Morrow's true feelings toward gays (if he has any). But, from the readers standpoint, it is most inconveniently placed smack in the middle of a section where he gets very high on the horse and very outraged about the racism at Fort Leonard Wood and elsewhere. It is awkward, to say the least, to criticize racial stereotypes on the one hand while spewing sexual stereotypes on the other, Mr. Morrow. A soapbox is a risky foundation from which preachers have swiftly fallen countless times.
But enough of this. The issue of gays in the military is dealt with elsewhere with other book reviews. . Morrows book is a good one, and I enjoyed it.
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