A passionate, engaging combination of history, memoir, and examination of income inequality.
A well-documented study of land ownership among Black Americans and the accompanying land theft.
Land ownership in America has long been associated with trauma, going back to the early days of settler colonialism, slavery, and genocide. Baker asks, “What does it mean to reclaim that tainted history and desecrated land, land rightfully associated with trauma, to become not only a home but also a vehicle for equity?” The author chronicles her grandparents’ early stewardship of land in North Carolina before they were compelled to move north (to New Jersey) with the Great Migration. Seeking to return to their roots, however, Baker’s family eventually came back to North Carolina in 2012, when she was a teenager, and bought 86 acres. The author examines this trend within a broader historical context, beginning with the enormous strides in Black land ownership after the Civil War, when one in five Black heads of household had become property owners, a number that grew “exponentially” from 1870 to 1890. However, with Black ownership came the inevitable “whitewash.” Baker describes the (re)rise of white supremacy in places like Wilmington, where, in 1898, violence broke out, leading to voter intimidation and destruction of Black businesses. The violence forced Black citizens to flee, relinquishing ownership of land to whites. The author notes that the chaos in Wilmington created a “blueprint” for seizing Black property in subsequent riots in Tulsa and Atlanta. The Great Migration lured Black Americans northward to escape, yet by leaving the land, they grew increasingly impoverished. Baker investigates the “complicity” of the Department of Agriculture in allowing Black land theft, and she considers how Black and Indigenous groups have shared land trauma and worked together; the issue of reparations; and Hazel Johnson and the rise of the environmental justice movement.
A passionate, engaging combination of history, memoir, and examination of income inequality.Pub Date: June 18, 2024
ISBN: 9780593447376
Page Count: 320
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
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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An important dialogue at a fraught time, emphasizing mutual candor, curiosity, and respect.
Two bestselling authors engage in an enlightening back-and-forth about Jewishness and antisemitism.
Acho, author of Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man, and Tishby, author of Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth, discuss many of the searing issues for Jews today, delving into whether Jewishness is a religion, culture, ethnicity, or community—or all of the above. As Tishby points out, unlike in Christianity, one can be comfortably atheist and still be considered a Jew. She defines Judaism as a “big tent” religion with four main elements: religion, peoplehood, nationhood, and the idea of tikkun olam (“repairing the world through our actions”). She addresses candidly the hurtful stereotypes about Jews (that they are rich and powerful) that Acho grew up with in Dallas and how Jews internalize these antisemitic judgments. Moreover, Tishby notes, “it is literally impossible to be Jewish and not have any connection with Israel, and I’m not talking about borders or a dot on the map. Judaism…is an indigenous religion.” Acho wonders if one can legitimately criticize “Jewish people and their ideologies” without being antisemitic, and Tishby offers ways to check whether one’s criticism of Jews or Zionism is antisemitic or factually straightforward. The authors also touch on the deteriorating relationship between Black and Jewish Americans, despite their historically close alliance during the civil rights era. “As long as Jewish people get to benefit from appearing white while Black people have to suffer for being Black, there will always be resentment,” notes Acho. “Because the same thing that grants you all access—your skin color—is what grants us pain and punishment in perpetuity.” Finally, the authors underscore the importance of being mutual allies, and they conclude with helpful indexes on vernacular terms and customs.
An important dialogue at a fraught time, emphasizing mutual candor, curiosity, and respect.Pub Date: April 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781668057858
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon Element
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
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