A much-needed reminder of the inexhaustibility of the human quest for personal and collective freedom.
A history of the 1989 picnic that became “the first great breach of the Iron Curtain.”
In the late 1980s, the Soviet Union was weakening, reformers had risen to power in Hungary, and people were fleeing East Germany. Longo, a professor of political science at Leiden University (Netherlands) and author of The Politics of Borders: Sovereignty, Security, and the Citizen After 9/11, draws on interviews with those involved—as well as insights from relevant political philosophers such as Hannah Arendt and Isaiah Berlin—to tell the story of the Pan-European Picnic held on Aug. 19, 1989. Orchestrated by a group of Hungarian activists, the goal was to create “a giant open-air party celebrating Europe togetherness and freedom,” and the event was to include the symbolic—and temporary—opening of a gate between Hungary and Austria. At the time, Hungary was filled with refugees from East Germany, and when they arrived at the picnic site that morning, the gate seemed to be the only barrier between them and liberty. They burst through and, with the Hungarian border guards hesitant to act, between 600 and 1,000 people fled. The picnic came to symbolize the possibility of evading the oppression of Soviet-style communism and achieving a better life. Citizens of Warsaw Pact countries under Soviet control had been denied personal autonomy and deprived of communal solidarity. They aspired to a sense of collective belonging, Longo argues, rather than the individualism and consumerism of the West. Deftly weaving together the geopolitical and the personal, Longo offers historical context to the current fixation on the global rise and spread of xenophobic and authoritarian regimes, including that of Viktor Orbán in Hungary. Extensively documented, well written, and thoughtful in its consideration of what freedom means, this book is an informative and engaging history of the event, its origins, and the aftermath.
A much-needed reminder of the inexhaustibility of the human quest for personal and collective freedom.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780393540772
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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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