A sleek, well-rendered work to wake readers up to the plight of the Lebanese people.
A French Lebanese professor and author assesses a catastrophic summer in his hometown.
As the economic meltdown intensified in a city already suffering from political and social strife, the situation was further compounded by the pandemic and the shattering explosion that occurred at the Beirut port on Aug. 4, 2020. In a stylistically arresting, truncated first-person narrative, Majdalani lays bare the saga of modern-day Beirut since it gained independence from the French mandate in 1945. The city’s “singular identity…also proved to be Lebanon’s defining characteristic for many years: a nation straddling the great cultures of the East and the West, a crossroads, a herald of coexistence, openness, cultural exchange and integration.” However, as the author shows, a series of corrupt leaders over the decades created “a system of governance that was entirely based on clientelistic mafia practices,” which drained the public coffers. The effect of this bankrupt economy is ever present in this urgent diary, which begins just before July 1, 2020. Majdalani writes about how he was considering buying land in the mountains to get his family out of the crowded, pandemic-stricken city. At the time, banks begin refusing withdrawals, the appliances in his Beirut apartment broke down, and the effects of rampant inflation grew alarming. Though the author and his wife still met friends at the few restaurants still hanging on, the number of businesses closing was staggering, as were constant problems involving garbage accumulation and a lack of social services. Then came the explosion, when 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate abandoned at the city’s port hangar resulted in more than 200 deaths, 7,500 injuries, and billions in damages. “The slow, meticulous sedimentation of time,” writes Majdalani, “was swept away in a few seconds by the blast of a vengeful and incomprehensibly cruel present.” The abrupt ending will leave readers wanting more, but the author gives us an important glimpse of a city that is often ignored in contemporary media.
A sleek, well-rendered work to wake readers up to the plight of the Lebanese people.Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63542-178-1
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Other Press
Review Posted Online: June 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
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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