A useful resource for the classroom and anyone interested in the history of American English.
Stavans brings together poets and presidents, rappers and novelists to show how language has shaped, and been shaped by, American culture.
Language has always demonstrated the power to both unite and divide, sometimes simultaneously. It is also a field of remarkable richness, as this collection of essays, poems, speeches, and song lyrics shows. Stavans, a Mexican American author and academic, presents a broad spectrum of material, from the Pilgrims to the age of Twitter, tracking the evolution of American English. For a significant period of time, particularly in the early days of the republic, a common language was seen as necessary to hold a country of immigrants together. Despite numerous attempts to standardize the language, the strength of American English has always been its capacity to absorb new words and phrases. One major debate involved the role of patois in Black communities, which drew on slavery-era roots: Was it a way to assert independence or a reinforcement of negative stereotypes? This argument would continue for decades, although James Baldwin’s 1979 essay, “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Tell Me What Is?” (included here) was a powerful statement for the legitimacy of Black language. A similar theme emerged from Spanish-background writers: How can unity and diversity be balanced within a framework of language? Stavans’ piece on Spanglish points to one path forward. While he acknowledges that America is now in “a time of passionate philological belligerence,” as the particulars of language seem to be driving people apart more than bringing them together, Stavans might have offered more material about the impact of social media’s acronyms and contractions on language development. Nevertheless, the book provides a sweeping historical narrative and solid context for further discussion. Among the many notable contributions are pieces from Sojourner Truth, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Thomas Wolfe, Zora Neale Hurston, William Faulkner, Richard Rodriguez, Toni Morrison, Joy Harjo, John McWhorter, and Kendrick Lamar.
A useful resource for the classroom and anyone interested in the history of American English.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-63206-265-9
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Restless Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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