Slim's Table

August 17, 1992
While a graduate student during the 1980s Duneier, who is white, hung out for four years with the black and white regulars at Valois Cafeteria, a restaurant on the fringes of the black ghetto on Chicago's South Side. Through his eyes we meet Slim, a reserved black car mechanic whose solicitude for Bart, a retired white file clerk from the rural South, strips the latter of his preconceptions about blacks. A moving testament to the power of integration over ingrained beliefs, this sensitive study reveals that the underclass has many faces. Unlike the ``outer-directed, attention-seeking'' black male stereotypes portrayed in sociology and the mass media, Duneier's African American cafeteria buddies are ``consistently inner-directed,'' deriving their sense of self-worth from adherence to personal standards of civility, solidarity, decency, pride and discretion. Duneier, who recently received his doctorate in sociology from the University of Chicago, shows how the collective life of the cafeteria helps its clientele overcome their sense of living in a moral vacuum. Photos not seen by PW.

July 1, 1992
This book deals with the lives of older working-class African American men of the South Side ghettos of Chicago. The author spent four years getting to know these men at their gathering place, the Valois "see your food" Cafeteria in Hyde Park. The men who comprise Slim's table are a representative group of employed, mainly single men living in rooms or small apartments. They exhibit tolerance and pride and demonstrate respect and civility toward others. The author believes that the way they live is a model for all races and hopes to refute media stereotypes by reporting the reality of their situations. The book is written for a college-educated audience. Recommended for large public libraries.-- Del Cain, V.A. Medical Ctr. Lib., Bedford, Mass.

Copyright 1992 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 1992
University of Chicago student Duneier applied his sociology education to his immediate surroundings when he began to pay close attention to the regulars at a neighborhood cafeteria. Like many urban universities, his borders both a ghetto and a middle-class area, making for some interesting social interactions. Duneier became intrigued with the dynamics of a group of black men that had been meeting and eating at Valois for decades. Slim, a mechanic, is the group's center and moral authority; his friends include a self-employed exterminator, a retired meter inspector, a film developer, and an administrator at the Board of Education. As Duneier got to know Slim and company, he was struck by their sense of duty and camaraderie, noting particularly Slim's relationship with Bart, a lonely, elderly, and difficult white man. As Duneier carefully and methodically relays conversations and occurrences, he compares these experiences to the prevailing stereotypes of black men. He concludes that media images and distressing statistics on the high divorce, homicide, and incarceration rates and low life expectancy of black men ignore "the black man's inner strength--his resolve, his pride, and his sincerity." A trifle academic, but nonetheless heartfelt and moving, the text is accompanied by photographs by Ovie Carter, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer for the "Chicago Tribune." ((Reviewed Aug. 1992))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1992, American Library Association.)