An eclectic and consistently urgent collection of essays tackling society’s blind spots.
In her debut collection of essays, Jackson explores race and culture in contemporary America.
For the author, there’s nothing contradictory about being a journalist and an activist. “Authentic journalism is a quest to tell the truth,” Jackson writes in her preface. “The conflation of what is viewed as objective and white cultural bias has become a liability that has limited the scope of our media and stunted our capacity as Americans to see each other clearly enough to tell complete, nuanced and true stories.” This collection features many pieces that center her perspective as a Black woman in America (and specifically in Seattle—many of the essays revolve around Jackson’s experiences as a Black homeowner in the swiftly gentrifying neighborhood of Rainier Beach). Taking on such diverse topics as Black History Month, reparations, the movie Get Out, and the experiences of Black people in study abroad programs, the author analyzes the current state of racism in America. This is not her only theme: Other essays touch on subjects as disparate as fatphobia in yoga, death doulas, the American cultural influence in Honduras, and the work of Indigenous comedian Howie Echo-Hawk. Jackson’s prose is incisive and humorous, drawing on her personal story to illustrate her larger critiques: “When I went to meet the cohort I would be traveling with, it felt like I was pledging a white sorority,” she writes of her junior year studying in Cadiz. “I went to Spain with 30 white women, 5 men, and 2 other women of color and it was an amazing experience, but one that was clearly not designed with me in mind.” Many of these pieces originally appeared in publications like the Seattle Globalist and the South Seattle Emerald, and most are no more than a few pages in length. Taken together, they constitute an argument for the necessity of marginalized voices in journalism that will resonate with many readers.
An eclectic and consistently urgent collection of essays tackling society’s blind spots.Pub Date: March 26, 2024
ISBN: 9781609441548
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Hinton Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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