A dynamic artistic rendering of chaos survived—at least so far.
An artist chronicles the headlines of an extraordinarily tumultuous year.
As Engler explains in the introduction, she had never imagined her work would find her bearing witness to such momentous upheaval. “I painted the day’s headlines,” she writes, “making a picture of the first few news items I heard emitting from my wooden bedside radio when I woke up each morning.” For much of her career, she writes, “my art had been about depicting the mundane or ordinary to create a big picture, working from the small and intimate to arrive at a greater whole.” Yet 2020 would confound everyone’s expectations, and revisiting it through Engler’s vivid drawings and sharp memories is enough to give anyone whiplash. The impeachment trials and the presidential campaigning dominated the news at the beginning of 2020, with the threat of pandemic barely a whisper. Even as that threat accelerated, there were countless mixed messages in the media, as the virus spread from China across the world, with concentrated outbreaks in New York and elsewhere around the country. By the end of March, the U.S. led the world in cases. A full month later, with the country in various states of shutdown, the same news cycle showed Dr. Anthony Fauci warning of worse to come in the fall and Jared Kushner hailing the administration’s containment of the virus as “a great success.” The author goes on to depict the murder of George Floyd, the rise of Black Lives Matter and nationwide protests, Trump and other associates testing positive, and the chaotic presidential election. The book ends with Joe Biden’s inauguration. Throughout, Engler combines the sharp eye of an editorial caricaturist with the vibrant color of a portraitist, and the energy of the artwork underscores the sense of urgency in the day's news. The accompanying text has a matter-of-fact tone that belies the powerful underlying sense that so much has gone seriously awry.
A dynamic artistic rendering of chaos survived—at least so far.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-82469-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Metropolitan/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
PERSPECTIVES
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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