A good reminder that the work of activists is often challenging yet important.
A guide to being an uncompromising feminist in today’s world.
In her latest work, British Australian writer and scholar Ahmed, author of Living a Feminist Life, offers a guide to thriving as a feminist. A feminist killjoy, also known as a “buzzkill, miserabilist, party pooper, wet blanket, dampener, and spoilsport,” is someone who speaks out and calls for change in response to sexist, homophobic, transphobic, or racist comments. “My aim,” she writes, “is not to rescue us from the feminist killjoy but to give her a voice,” and she hopes to help those “fighting against inequalities and injustices of many kinds.” Throughout, Ahmed shares her experiences as a queer female feminist of color as well as stories that others have shared with her, with a particular focus on the responses and types of push back commonly encountered. As the author points out, as feminist killjoys, “we learn about the world from what comes back at us because of what we say or do.” Ahmed also references and analyzes literature and films that have inspired her and help illustrate her points. Among the survival tips she shares with fellow feminist killjoys are surrounding yourself with like-minded individuals, knowing that you are not always responsible for how you are received, and remembering that there is only so much you can do. As a supplement, Ahmed also includes her collection of killjoy maxims, recommended further reading, and reading group discussion questions for the book. The author notes that she was strongly influenced by Black writer and feminist Audre Lorde and references her works extensively throughout the guide. Although Ahmed makes strong and relatable points, her writing is wordy and repetitive at times. Regardless, feminist and social activists are certain to find the book encouraging.
A good reminder that the work of activists is often challenging yet important.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2023
ISBN: 9781541603752
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Seal Press
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
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
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