The landscape of free speech is in constant flux, and Baron provides important context to the current debates.
An expert on language reviews the complex issues around free speech and what they mean for democratic practice.
Free speech is one of the key principles of American democracy, but Baron, an emeritus professor of English and author specializing in this field, describes it as more like “free speech, but.” Despite the First Amendment prohibition on government regulation of speech, there have always been exceptions and rules. It is a vital area for study and debate, but a problem with the book is that Baron, while presenting himself as a dispassionate expert, shows his liberal leanings too often. When he discusses extremists who would limit free speech, he focuses only on conservative activists, ignoring the left-wing variety. Though Donald Trump’s presidency was unquestionably chaotic and most likely corrupt, the author’s tone regarding the former president feels like he’s trying to score points with liberal readers. For example, in the section on the prohibition of threats to the president, he skips over the many threats to assassinate Trump, such as the public statement by Madonna that she wanted to blow up the White House, and instead focuses on Trump’s (admittedly) dubious pronouncements. He also includes a long section on gun ownership and the Second Amendment, although the connection with free speech is not clear. Despite these issues, Baron provides a useful and interesting examination of the court cases related to free speech and includes a discussion on the changing parameters relating to obscenity, sedition, artistic expression, and threats. Passing a law is one thing, and interpreting it for practical application is quite another. “Despite the large body of legal rulings,” writes the author, “the border between protected and unprotected speech is seldom clear or stable, which may leave speakers unsure about what they can say and when. Laws may protect speech, but they always leave some speech unprotected.”
The landscape of free speech is in constant flux, and Baron provides important context to the current debates.Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-00-919890-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Cambridge Univ.
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
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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