Thought-provoking interviews with young global activists hampered by uneven organization.
Personal coach Kimball presents the concerns of young feminist activists around the world in their own words.
As the holder of a doctorate in religious studies and the author of more than a dozen sociological and self-help texts, Kimball set out to interview young activists around the globe, ages 13 to 30, to discover the issues they face and their activism in response. Readers hear from women and girls in the United States, Rwanda, Afghanistan, Hungary, China, India, Turkey, Uruguay, Kyrgyzstan, Sri Lanka, and Canada, and the feminism-related topics include Black feminism, body image, gender identity, safety, reproductive rights, and corporate issues, among others. The beginning of the book reviews the feminist movement over multiple decades for more than 100 pages, including analyses of women’s leadership styles; first-, second-, third- and fourth-wave feminist concerns; women’s studies programs; intersectionality; and tactics for change, including modes of protest. This section is heavily footnoted in the manner of an academic paper before Kimball gets to the substance of the book—the interviews with young feminists. The situations and experiences of the subjects are often fascinating, and they vary widely. For instance, Nurzhan Estebesova in Kyrgyzstan, who was born in 1996, points out that women’s concerns in her country differ from those of Western women; for girls in this majority-Muslim country, education is key, she says, and the internet looms large as it offers access to new ideas to be identified and discussed. However, the book’s formatting can be confusing at times. The author’s questions are mixed in with the responses, and although the author’s comments are in italics and the interviewees’ in regular type, readers will frequently wonder who’s talking at a given moment; frequently, Kimball will merely comment, rather than asking a question (“You’ve done volunteer work in other countries”), which complicates a more traditional Q&A flow. Topics jump around chaotically, as well, making some interviews hard to follow, and Kimball’s habit of discussing the interviewees’ astrological signs may also dilute the book’s intended impact for readers without an interest in astrology.
Thought-provoking interviews with young global activists hampered by uneven organization.Pub Date: April 13, 2023
ISBN: 9780938795162
Page Count: 360
Publisher: Equality Press
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2023
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
A top-notch political memoir and serious exercise in practical politics for every reader.
In the first volume of his presidential memoir, Obama recounts the hard path to the White House.
In this long, often surprisingly candid narrative, Obama depicts a callow youth spent playing basketball and “getting loaded,” his early reading of difficult authors serving as a way to impress coed classmates. (“As a strategy for picking up girls, my pseudo-intellectualism proved mostly worthless,” he admits.) Yet seriousness did come to him in time and, with it, the conviction that America could live up to its stated aspirations. His early political role as an Illinois state senator, itself an unlikely victory, was not big enough to contain Obama’s early ambition, nor was his term as U.S. Senator. Only the presidency would do, a path he painstakingly carved out, vote by vote and speech by careful speech. As he writes, “By nature I’m a deliberate speaker, which, by the standards of presidential candidates, helped keep my gaffe quotient relatively low.” The author speaks freely about the many obstacles of the race—not just the question of race and racism itself, but also the rise, with “potent disruptor” Sarah Palin, of a know-nothingism that would manifest itself in an obdurate, ideologically driven Republican legislature. Not to mention the meddlings of Donald Trump, who turns up in this volume for his idiotic “birther” campaign while simultaneously fishing for a contract to build “a beautiful ballroom” on the White House lawn. A born moderate, Obama allows that he might not have been ideological enough in the face of Mitch McConnell, whose primary concern was then “clawing [his] way back to power.” Indeed, one of the most compelling aspects of the book, as smoothly written as his previous books, is Obama’s cleareyed scene-setting for how the political landscape would become so fractured—surely a topic he’ll expand on in the next volume.
A top-notch political memoir and serious exercise in practical politics for every reader.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6316-9
Page Count: 768
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
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