A remarkable work that leaves us feeling hopeful for change.
An influential media commentator on racial justice explores politics and Black voters in this sharp blend of memoir and cultural criticism.
In her debut book, Collins-Dexter, a visiting fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, chronicles her “journey to get to the heart of Black political identity, a process that involved extensive interviews with Black people from all across the ideological spectrum.” She narrates a powerful story “about a Black America that had become disillusioned with the failed promises of their country.” In the 1960s, before it became known for White nationalism, the skinhead movement was a political movement comprised of the British working class, most of whom felt “left behind” and disillusioned by economic and political infrastructures. The author uses this idea as a launching pad to deconstruct a host of cultural frameworks involving politics and place in communities around the U.S., and she offers a well-rendered critique of the implicit attitude that Black voters prefer Democrats or Black candidates. Through the lens of Black voters, Collins-Dexter examines often complex political concepts in an accessible way—Kanye West’s troubling persona is a recurring topic—but the rigor of her scholarship is never in question. In the section on populism, the author employs wrestling lingo and characters from the World Wrestling Federation to describe political ideology from the left and right. “With its exaggerated narratives of good, evil, and the struggle of the everyman,” she writes, “[wrestling] is the perfect way to understand populism—its pitfalls and its undeniable draw.” Reminiscent of Notes From No Man’s Land, by Eula Biss, this collection is well constructed and incisively argued. Collins-Dexter begins and ends with poignant memories of her father, effectively tying the personal to the universal. Featuring a vivid mix of hard data, anecdotal details, and scholarly research, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in politics and Black lives in America.
A remarkable work that leaves us feeling hopeful for change.Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-82407-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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
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