Refreshing, illuminating contributions sure to spark lively and hopefully constructive discussion and debate.
A chorus of frank opinions personalize race and racism “across black America.”
Since the project began in 2012, the year Trayvon Martin was killed, acclaimed journalist Gordon has been assembling virtual conversations with black influencers on the condition of—and the issues facing—the nation’s black population. In each Q&A, the respondent, reflective of their unique communities, reacts to and answers queries about such topics as intracommunity violence, educational advancement, and how proactive attitudes and active engagement can bring about positive societal changes. The state of progress in black America is well articulated through the sentiments of activists and educators like Ericka Huggins, who insists the climate could shift if the “institutions and structures” changed in a nonmonolithic way, including within economic and political arenas. In one panel, which includes notable political figures and social activists like Stacey Abrams and Michael Steele, the contributors discuss the downslide of black equality amid a “drastically changed political landscape” of the Trump era and compare current conditions with that of the Obama administration, which had its own mixture of accomplishments and shortcomings. The narrative also looks at black leadership and how its efficacy can be evaluated and encouraged through outlets like social media and community outreach. Gordon wisely includes a diverse array of panelists within each discussion. These include comedians, TV producers, ministers, rappers, and academics as well as Harry Belafonte and 15-term congresswoman Maxine Waters. Their informed discussions offer both invaluable perspectives and solid motivation to counter the waves of racial injustice. Closing each chapter is a section of pertinent questions meant to inspire dialogue and create change on any level. Though the conversations are vibrant and empowering, the collective impression from the participants distressingly points to the fact that “the playing field for most Africans has not changed.” Other notable contributors include Jemele Hill, DeRay Mckesson, Michael Eric Dyson, Van Jones, Eric Holder, and Iyanla Vanzant.
Refreshing, illuminating contributions sure to spark lively and hopefully constructive discussion and debate.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-316-53286-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Hachette
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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