A compelling, if at times uneven, argument for reforming deportation policy.
Tramonte and Setty combine personal stories with analysis of public policy to provide an overview of the problems with deportations from the United States.
Through interviews, the authors (Tramonte is a communications consultant and director of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance; Setty is a senior policy analyst on the immigration and immigrant families team at the Center for Law and Social Policy) have collected the experiences of more than 250 people who have been deported from the United States—deportations that have created “lasting and unnecessary damage on ordinary people.” Their study focuses primarily on the effects on families, leading to analyses of the larger impacts on communities and society as a whole. Many of the personal stories referenced stem from “massive, SWAT-team style raids” throughout northern Ohio conducted by Trump’s ICE following his election and contain devastating testimony from the individuals who lived these experiences. Tramonte and Setty dig into research on the layers of harm resulting from events such as loss of income, children falling into poverty, mental health issues, physical health issues, and more. This research informs their concrete analysis as they go through the Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations to detail how systemic racism has affected immigration law and how more and more people have become eligible for deportation. The authors conclude with recommendations for improving the system. Tramonte and Setty’s breakdown of immigration policy across administrations is particularly enlightening and insightful, and the stories they have collected are potent and powerful, such as that of Seyni Diagne, who received no treatment for his cancer or hepatitis C, neither in ICE detention nor after being sent to jail in Mauritania, his country of origin. In organizing and building their overall argument, however, the authors’ use of a personal perspective versus a more critical, scientific eye feels unbalanced; certain stories are referenced anecdotally without the same background or gravitas as others. Even as it builds to a compelling thesis on immigration, the book feels unsure of the best rhetorical strategy for getting there.
A compelling, if at times uneven, argument for reforming deportation policy.Pub Date: Dec. 6, 2023
ISBN: 9798988862420
Page Count: 304
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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