Informative reading for activists and policymakers.
An immigration detention abolitionist explores the ties between America’s criminal justice and immigration systems.
For Shah, mass imprisonment and mass detention are two symptoms of the “American obsession with punishment and incarceration.” She traces the start of both to the explosive rise in prison building that began at the end of the 1980s and continued into the new millennium. Shah argues that the components underlying this trend—systemic racism, the failing war on drugs, and misguided national security concerns—carried over into sometimes brutal policies affecting immigrants and their status within American borders. Republican nativism was not entirely to blame for these developments, however. Bill Clinton "solidified the relationship between the criminal legal system and immigration enforcement system,” while Barack Obama focused on policies that criminalized and deported those immigrants deemed "unacceptable.” The connections thereby fostered between police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement culminated in Trump's inhumane family separation policy, as well as the increased moral panic about the threats represented by immigrants. Shah argues persuasively that this panic also led to increased prosecutions and detentions, especially for people coming from Central America. She further notes that some entities—most notably, private prisons—have profited handsomely from immigrant detention. As long as the demand for detention exists, so does the “need” to build more facilities, a situation Shah believes can only be ended by grassroots activism. At the same time, however, heightened awareness of police brutality brought about by the Black Lives Matter movement has helped spotlight how police and ICE collaborations have created dangerous situations for those immigrants made even more vulnerable by virtue of sex or gender identification. Shah’s intersectional approach to the immigrant justice struggle will interest those interested in immigration reform as well as individuals working on behalf of any marginalized community disproportionately affected by the current carceral system.
Informative reading for activists and policymakers.Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9798888900840
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
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
Maher calls out idiocy wherever he sees it, with a comedic delivery that veers between a stiletto and a sledgehammer.
The comedian argues that the arts of moderation and common sense must be reinvigorated.
Some people are born snarky, some become snarky, and some have snarkiness thrust upon them. Judging from this book, Maher—host of HBO’s Real Time program and author of The New New Rules and When You Ride Alone, You Ride With bin Laden—is all three. As a comedian, he has a great deal of leeway to make fun of people in politics, and he often delivers hilarious swipes with a deadpan face. The author describes himself as a traditional liberal, with a disdain for Republicans (especially the MAGA variety) and a belief in free speech and personal freedom. He claims that he has stayed much the same for more than 20 years, while the left, he argues, has marched toward intolerance. He sees an addiction to extremism on both sides of the aisle, which fosters the belief that anyone who disagrees with you must be an enemy to be destroyed. However, Maher has always displayed his own streaks of extremism, and his scorched-earth takedowns eventually become problematic. The author has something nasty to say about everyone, it seems, and the sarcastic tone starts after more than 300 pages. As has been the case throughout his career, Maher is best taken in small doses. The book is worth reading for the author’s often spot-on skewering of inept politicians and celebrities, but it might be advisable to occasionally dip into it rather than read the whole thing in one sitting. Some parts of the text are hilarious, but others are merely insulting. Maher is undeniably talented, but some restraint would have produced a better book.
Maher calls out idiocy wherever he sees it, with a comedic delivery that veers between a stiletto and a sledgehammer.Pub Date: May 21, 2024
ISBN: 9781668051351
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
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