A tremendously timely and important study of the rhetoric of hatred in our times.
A deeply relevant study of genocidal motivation and manifestation in America.
Rutgers anthropologist Hinton offers deep instruction for anyone seeking to better understand the bigotry that permeates American society. As the founder and director of the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights and an expert witness in the prosecution of Khmer Rouge ideologue Nuon Chea, who was convicted of genocide in the international tribunal in Cambodia in 2018, the author is well situated to investigate the topic. Structuring the narrative around his college seminars, he uses as a point of departure the 1935 bestseller by Sinclair Lewis, It Can’t Happen Here, which focused on a populist demagogue who advanced bigoted, dictatorial themes, just as Trump did decades later. Hinton is deeply concerned with the idea of why people hate and how that hate plays out publicly. The violent Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 plays a large role in this work, as the author shows how previously hidden White supremacist ideologies came to the fore. Hinton shows how these “ruptures” are simply one element of a long-standing systemic problem that Trump flushed into the open. “His presidency,” writes the author, “was a symptom of a long and enduring history of systemic white power in the United States, one filled with moments in which genocide and mass violence took place.” In addition to contextual background, Hinton moves methodically through specific White supremacist texts. As a committed teacher in the Socratic method, the author continually teases out answers from his intelligent, engaged students, who recognize that “it” has already happened here, many times over—from Native genocide to slavery to Jim Crow to the recent proliferation of White supremacy. As the author closes his well-researched, readable account in July 2020, one only wishes he could have included a section on the violent acts of Jan 6, 2021.
A tremendously timely and important study of the rhetoric of hatred in our times.Pub Date: June 8, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4798-0801-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: New York Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
A top-notch political memoir and serious exercise in practical politics for every reader.
In the first volume of his presidential memoir, Obama recounts the hard path to the White House.
In this long, often surprisingly candid narrative, Obama depicts a callow youth spent playing basketball and “getting loaded,” his early reading of difficult authors serving as a way to impress coed classmates. (“As a strategy for picking up girls, my pseudo-intellectualism proved mostly worthless,” he admits.) Yet seriousness did come to him in time and, with it, the conviction that America could live up to its stated aspirations. His early political role as an Illinois state senator, itself an unlikely victory, was not big enough to contain Obama’s early ambition, nor was his term as U.S. Senator. Only the presidency would do, a path he painstakingly carved out, vote by vote and speech by careful speech. As he writes, “By nature I’m a deliberate speaker, which, by the standards of presidential candidates, helped keep my gaffe quotient relatively low.” The author speaks freely about the many obstacles of the race—not just the question of race and racism itself, but also the rise, with “potent disruptor” Sarah Palin, of a know-nothingism that would manifest itself in an obdurate, ideologically driven Republican legislature. Not to mention the meddlings of Donald Trump, who turns up in this volume for his idiotic “birther” campaign while simultaneously fishing for a contract to build “a beautiful ballroom” on the White House lawn. A born moderate, Obama allows that he might not have been ideological enough in the face of Mitch McConnell, whose primary concern was then “clawing [his] way back to power.” Indeed, one of the most compelling aspects of the book, as smoothly written as his previous books, is Obama’s cleareyed scene-setting for how the political landscape would become so fractured—surely a topic he’ll expand on in the next volume.
A top-notch political memoir and serious exercise in practical politics for every reader.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6316-9
Page Count: 768
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
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