A cogent analysis of an urban-growth phenomenon that is rarely done well or equitably.
Universities have become powerful forces in shaping modern cities, writes urbanist Baldwin, and rarely for the better.
The author, founding director of the Smart Cities Lab at Trinity College, begins in a largely Black neighborhood bordering the University of Chicago, an area being steadily swallowed by the growing campus, a process symbolized by the quiet expropriation of a Bronzeville historical site, a “blues shrine” called the Checkerboard Lounge. “UChicago’s backdoor deal,” writes Baldwin, “resuscitated almost a century of local stories in which the school had either demolished Black neighborhoods or built institutional walls to keep Black residents away from campus.” The temptation to become large-scale property holders is great. As Baldwin notes, given declining student revenues and decreased state funding, colleges and universities are finding that “urban development is higher education’s latest economic growth strategy.” The results are usually harmful to the people, almost always economically disadvantaged minorities and small business owners, who actually live in the downtown areas that universities are turning into “UniverCities.” In the case of Phoenix, the state university built downtown residence high-rises for students, then promulgated the notion that downtown was dangerous, a prejudice that already existed: “students had largely grown up in the suburbs, so they equated the city with danger, even though the [suburban] Tempe campus had higher crime rates.” The same is true in other cities: Chicago, New York, New Haven, the list goes on. Only when campuses venture into privileged areas does their growth sometimes falter: Baldwin cites the expansion of NYU into Greenwich Village that came under scrutiny only when local resident Matthew Broderick opposed it—even though an 8-year-old girl made the better case when she “wondered aloud why college students were incapable of taking a subway for a class or two when she took the train to school every day.” No matter what the opposition, though, the author identifies and critiques a trend that seems unlikely to stop.
A cogent analysis of an urban-growth phenomenon that is rarely done well or equitably.Pub Date: March 30, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-56858-892-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Bold Type Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2021
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
