A well-researched guidebook for encouraging civic-mindedness.
A veteran community activist and municipal government leader tackles civic hostility.
As bitter partisan rhetoric divides voters, hate crimes continue to surge, and extremist conspiracy theories have taken over local city council meetings, Canadian author Kalen-Sukra warns: “We are all losing sight of the great threat this toxicity poses to our democratic way of life.” The book’s first section, “Welcome to Bullyville,” provides a harrowing survey of how the decay of civic norms has contributed to governmental (virtually any and all levels of government) inability to address pressing problems of climate change, growing inequity, housing, etc. While realistic in its assessment of the noxiousness of contemporary culture, the book provides alternative approaches in its second and third sections, “Journey to Sustainaville” and “Sustainable Culture.” The author proposes that we reemphasize civic education, which could potentially spark a “culture and values revolution” that prioritizes compassion and empathy. Kalen-Sukra is careful to note that these changes must occur at the local level and require a team of “civil society representatives,” from business leaders to community activists. As a certified municipal clerk, former local government chief administrative officer, and columnist for Municipal World magazine, the author draws on three decades’ worth of experience in local government and community organizing. While some might find the goal of fervent community mindedness to be Pollyannaish, the author lists specific, realistic avenues for change. A foreword by the former executive director of Toronto’s Christie Refugee Welcome Centre, various diagrams and other visual aids, and 50-plus endnotes contribute to the book’s informed presentation and welcoming style.
A well-researched guidebook for encouraging civic-mindedness.Pub Date: April 18, 2019
ISBN: 9780228810872
Page Count: 182
Publisher: Tellwell Talent
Review Posted Online: March 11, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
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