A largely detached observer offers a series of digestible, timely assessments of the U.S.
Astute observations about both the expanse of American "civilization" and the dilution of its "exceptionalism."
The United States has always been subject to scrutiny and criticism, from de Tocqueville to Borat, and Castañeda—the global professor of political science and Latin American studies at NYU who served as the foreign minister of Mexico from 2000 to 2003—is a rather avuncular critic of many aspects of American society. Via his meandering notes on the middle class, humor, "dysfunctional" democracy, racial issues, and other topics, he provides mostly valuable and useful analysis. Interestingly, he counters some of the usual, often heard criticism from Europeans and Latin Americans about the American "sameness," uniformity, and homogeneity, examining in comparative graphs the rise of the middle class. While it was, on one hand, the envy of the world—cars, TVs, and other gadgets in every household—it masked the "underlying diversity" that made up the country and largely excluded significant populations of blacks, Natives, and Latinos. The relative equality of income distribution peaked in the late 1960s and has grown increasingly unequal since. Castañeda also examines the country's much-vaunted (and highly problematic) systems of meritocracy and expectation of social mobility—and how the latter trend has declined below the levels of many European countries. The other "defining trait" of America—after uniformity and obsession with money—is "exceptionalism,” a myth that the author explodes, quoting Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes: “The United States has been the bearer of a nationalism as aggressive and self-celebratory as any European imperial power.” In the last, hard-hitting chapter, "The Unforgivable," Castañeda explores how America's grand Enlightenment ideals have been trampled by a “breach of contract with liberalism and tolerance” in terms of “mass incarceration, the death penalty, guns, and intelligent design.”
A largely detached observer offers a series of digestible, timely assessments of the U.S.Pub Date: July 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-19-022449-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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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