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IN OUR SHOES

ON BEING A YOUNG BLACK WOMAN IN NOT-SO "POST-RACIAL" AMERICA

A commendable, colloquial perspective on a continually fraught topic.

Essays exploring unjust conditions faced by Black women as well as what White people should do to dismantle racism.

“In this part memoir, part cultural critique,” Holt writes, “I have done my best to describe what it means to be a young Black woman navigating ‘post-racial’ America through my memories, recollections, and experiences.” The author, who has worked for BuzzFeed and written for Rolling Stone, the Guardian, and other publications, signed a book deal after her 2020 New York Times op-ed about celebrating Juneteenth went viral. Now 27, she focuses on cultural appropriation in society and especially on social media. “Black women’s style and swag are often stolen and then praised on their white counterparts,” writes the author, “rendering Black women invisible, or worse, denigrated for the very things white people have stolen from them.” Holt posits that “the idea that we live in a post-racial society” may be responsible for the widespread belief that “unity or simple notions of togetherness are solutions to solving racism and creating a more just world for Black people….But that simply isn’t the case.” Drawing from more than 100 sources, including studies, videos, tweets, and interviews she conducted, Holt illustrates insidious examples of how “whiteness often practices self-preservation,” which leads to numerous deleterious effects on Black women. The chapters bear titles such as “Leave the Box Braids for the Black Girls” and “The Road to Healing On- and Offline,” and all close with descriptions of actions necessary for improvement. For example, Holt writes, White women “must self-reflect and acknowledge their own blind spots, while simultaneously counteracting them by making space for, showing up for, and passing along opportunities to Black women.” Holt offers particularly potent critiques of unconscious bias in the workplace and the many flaws inherent in White feminism.

A commendable, colloquial perspective on a continually fraught topic.

Pub Date: April 11, 2023

ISBN: 9780593186398

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Plume

Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023

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THE MESSAGE

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

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WAR

An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.

Documenting perilous times.

In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”

An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.

Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024

ISBN: 9781668052273

Page Count: 448

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024

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