Loose Canons: Notes on the Culture Wars.(Brief Article)

For the average reader Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s Loose Canons.' Notes on the Culture Wars is likely to prove engaging and frustrating. Engaging because the 10 essays on the education and miseducation of the American mind are a short course on the evolution of AfricanAmerican literature and its role in our liberation. The frustration comes if you aren't familiar with the oodles of literary and publishing references Gates tosses around so freely. He can exasperate as he seeks to enlighten.

Readers who believe in a multicultural approach to school and college curricula will keep reading. That is what Gates champions, and he wants us to believe that a new curriculum will …