A dispiriting picture of deepening political polarization.
A close look at far-right activism among the younger electorate.
Drawing on more than 200 interviews conducted between 2018 and 2022, journalist Spencer produces an eye-opening report on the rise of ultraconservatism among young people, focusing intensively on three figures: Cliff Maloney (b. 1991), who rose to become president of Young Americans for Liberty; Charlie Kirk (b. 1993), founder of Turning Point USA; and Candace Owens (b. 1989), celebrated as a “Black YouTube sensation” and often appearing on Fox News. The movement promotes the anti-government, free-market ideas common to the far right. While Young Americans for Liberty aligns with libertarianism, Turning Point USA focuses on culture wars issues: anti-abortion, pro–gun rights, and climate change denial. Owens, promoting a stance she calls BLEXIT, is “unapologetically dismissive when others claimed Black victimhood” and pointed out “systemic racism.” Stop complaining about the impact of slavery, she has exhorted, and look to the future. After the election of Donald Trump, the movement’s rhetoric became increasing infused with expressions of cruelty, homophobia, and ethnic stereotyping. Besides chronicling the spread of right-wing views among young people, Spencer underscores Republicans’ enthusiastic support of strategic advice and significant amounts of money. Though ambitious, outspoken, and hardworking, the movements’ leaders would not have been able to gain widespread influence and attract followers without funding by wealthy, powerful conservatives such as Charles Koch and Robert and Rebekah Mercer, among other billionaires. YAL’s “Win the Door” campaign, aimed at electing ultraconservative candidates in state races, and TPUSA’s savvy deployment of online outlets fed into Republicans’ game plan—which, Spencer advises, could well serve as a model for Democrats, who historically have ignored young, progressive activists. Bringing just as much energy and determination as their conservative counterparts, these young people, writes Spencer, must be heard as well as supported wholeheartedly.
A dispiriting picture of deepening political polarization.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-304136-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
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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