Cogent dissections of issues that require constant attention.
Three lectures on racism in America and the role of a liberal arts education in challenging it.
In 2019, prominent anthropologist and educator Cole, president of the National Council of Negro Women, delivered the Malcolm Lester Phi Beta Kappa Lectures on the Liberal Arts and Public Life at Mercer University. As professor David A. Davis notes in the foreword, Cole “offers a vision for how liberal arts institutions can address racism and be vehicles for change….Dr. Cole’s lectures look back on her own experiences with racism since her childhood in segregated Jacksonville, Florida, and she explains how racism still affects public life in this country.” She brings a highly knowledgeable historical and personal perspective and context to these issues, showing how deeply racism is embedded in the DNA of America and urging an engagement in the “courageous conversations” required to heal the many divisions that plague the nation. The adaptation of Cole’s incisive lectures into a book faces a couple of challenges. Because these were stand-alone lectures on interrelated issues, there are points that seem repetitive and belabored (though no less accurate) over three successive chapters. The bigger problem is timing, as these lectures occurred a year before the pandemic lockdown, the death of George Floyd, and the home stretch of the chaotic 2020 presidential campaign—all of which altered and accelerated the national dialogue on race. Nonetheless, Cole demonstrates the impact of the length and depth of these festering national wounds, and the introduction and afterword (by Tikia K. Hamilton, an educator focused on diversity and race-related issues) do a decent job of creating a more contemporary frame for the lectures. Throughout, Cole’s tone is measured and nuanced yet urgent. She ends the book by quoting Frederick Douglass, who famously said, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”
Cogent dissections of issues that require constant attention.Pub Date: Feb. 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-8139-4562-0
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Univ. of Virginia
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2021
PERSPECTIVES
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Everything about Sabathia is larger than life, yet he tells his story with honesty and humility.
One of the best pitchers of his generation—and often the only Black man on his team—shares an extraordinary life in baseball.
A high school star in several sports, Sabathia was being furiously recruited by both colleges and professional teams when the death of his grandmother, whose Social Security checks supported the family, meant that he couldn't go to college even with a full scholarship. He recounts how he learned he had been drafted by the Cleveland Indians in the first round over the PA system at his high school. In 2001, after three seasons in the minor leagues, Sabathia became the youngest player in MLB (age 20). His career took off from there, and in 2008, he signed with the New York Yankees for seven years and $161 million, at the time the largest contract ever for a pitcher. With the help of Vanity Fair contributor Smith, Sabathia tells the entertaining story of his 19 seasons on and off the field. The first 14 ran in tandem with a poorly hidden alcohol problem and a propensity for destructive bar brawls. His high school sweetheart, Amber, who became his wife and the mother of his children, did her best to help him manage his repressed fury and grief about the deaths of two beloved cousins and his father, but Sabathia pursued drinking with the same "till the end" mentality as everything else. Finally, a series of disasters led to a month of rehab in 2015. Leading a sober life was necessary, but it did not tame Sabathia's trademark feistiness. He continued to fiercely rile his opponents and foment the fighting spirit in his teammates until debilitating injuries to his knees and pitching arm led to his retirement in 2019. This book represents an excellent launching point for Jay-Z’s new imprint, Roc Lit 101.
Everything about Sabathia is larger than life, yet he tells his story with honesty and humility.Pub Date: July 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-13375-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Roc Lit 101
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
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