The subtlety of Nelson's analysis and energy of her prose refresh the mind and spirit.
A top cultural critic plucks the concept of freedom away from right-wing sloganeers and explores its operation in current artistic and political conversations.
Containing far less memoir material than her much-loved The Argonauts (2015), Nelson's latest is more purely a work of criticism. In the first section, "Art Song," the author analyzes recent blowups related to cultural appropriation, "a discourse about how and when certain transgressions in art should be 'called out' and 'held accountable,' with the twist that now the so-called left is often cast—rightly or wrongly—in the repressive, punitive position." The author connects our exhaustion with our addiction to the "attention economy"—our 24/7 availability to 3.4 billion people using social media—to the dilemma she labels "I Care/I Can't." In the second section, "The Ballad of Sexual Optimism," Nelson teases out complexities and effects of the #MeToo movement in the context of the current fate of "sex positivity." She decries the conflict between different generations of thinkers and activists, “a totalizing script of intergenerational warfare, in which WE were brave, impressive adults seeking (and finding) pleasure and liberation, whereas YOU are pitiable, cowardly children obsessed with safety and trauma." The author also examines Monica Lewinsky's revisions of her personal history and Pema Chödrön's comments on the sexual rapacity of Trungpa Rinpoche. "Drug Fugue" analyzes intriguing texts, many not widely known, about intoxication and addiction. To open the final section, “Riding the Blinds,” Nelson considers her son's love for trains in the context of apocalyptic climate change. Acknowledging that many find the topic of global warming "too paralyzing, too sad, too frightening, too unimaginable," she compares our situation to that of hobos "riding the blinds"—hiding between cars, unable to see where they are headed. Still, she recommends we "love all the misery and freedom of living and, as best we can, not mind dying."
The subtlety of Nelson's analysis and energy of her prose refresh the mind and spirit.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64445-062-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Graywolf
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021
PERSPECTIVES
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
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.
Memories and life lessons inspired by the author’s mother, who was murdered in 2021.
“Neither my mother nor I knew that her last text to me would be the words ‘Think you’ll be happy,’ ” Avant writes, "but it is fitting that she left me with a mantra for resiliency.” The author, a filmmaker and former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas, begins her first book on the night she learned her mother, Jacqueline Avant, had been fatally shot during a home invasion. “One of my first thoughts,” she writes, “was, ‘Oh God, please don’t let me hate this man. Give me the strength not to hate him.’ ” Daughter of Clarence Avant, known as the “Black Godfather” due to his work as a pioneering music executive, the author describes growing up “in a house that had a revolving door of famous people,” from Ella Fitzgerald to Muhammad Ali. “I don’t take for granted anything I have achieved in my life as a Black American woman,” writes Avant. “And I recognize my unique upbringing…..I was taught to honor our past and pay forward our fruits.” The book, which is occasionally repetitive, includes tributes to her mother from figures like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton, but the narrative core is the author’s direct, faith-based, unwaveringly positive messages to readers—e.g., “I don’t want to carry the sadness and anger I have toward the man who did this to my mother…so I’m worshiping God amid the worst storm imaginable”; "Success and feeling good are contagious. I’m all about positive contagious vibrations!” Avant frequently quotes Bible verses, and the bulk of the text reflects the spirit of her daily prayer “that everything is in divine order.” Imploring readers to practice proactive behavior, she writes, “We have to always find the blessing, to be the blessing.”
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9780063304413
Page Count: 288
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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