My Kind! My Country!

My Kind! My Country! is a 1950 novel by Aldrich Blake about race relations in America. The novel runs 385 pages.

Review

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My Kind! My Country!, by Aldrich Blake. This is frankly a propagandist novel on interracial tolerance. The author needn't have warned us that the characters are fictitious. It is definitely a "made" story. Nonetheless, it has some value in lucidly setting forth a problem agitating this country.

Husband Jim and wife Martha, residents of a select section of Oakwood, hold different ideas about Jews and Negroes and "foreigners" generally. Jim is a progressive liberal and is all for giving these people the green light in the matter of social freedoms. Martha, while not particularly prejudiced, doesn't like the idea at all.

Jim is preparing to write a great book advocating freedom for all and sundry. He plans to call it "Assignment Utopia." Not to be outdone, Martha decides to retaliate by writing a book to be called "My Kind! My Country!" It is a good-natured contest until the chickens come home to roost. Son David is engaged to an orthodox Jewish girl; son Harry expects to marry a Japanese; daughter Ellen is madly in love with a Negro, a fine fellow, to be sure, who makes Mother Martha wish he were white.

All this is a bit thick even for the ultra-tolerant Father Jim, who scraps his book and lets Mother Martha publish hers. Womanlike, she has the last word and doubtless, judging from the title, this is her book, even though Aldrich Blake has signed his name to it.

It is the author's conclusion that all people should have equality, but that they are happier in their own restricted circles. Essay matter is interspersed among the fiction.

—JOHN COURNOS.

Source: The Saturday Review, July 15, 1950 [1]