A Black female activist’s gripping memoir.
Fighting for a cause.
Growing up in Co-op City in New York, Mallory was often in trouble, skipping school, breaking curfew, and dating a series of dangerous men and boys, including “a high-stakes robber.” Giving birth to her son Tarique gives her the momentum she needs to start living more responsibly. In an attempt to provide for her child, she takes a job answering phones for a lawyer “in the movement,” a job that changes her life. Working her way up the ladder, she eventually becomes executive director of the National Action Network, a group whose rallies she had attended since childhood. As she rises through the ranks, Mallory finds herself co-chairing the Women’s March, a decision that exposes her to accusations of antisemitism. The stress of the situation culminates in a trip to rehab, where Mallory overcomes an addiction to pills. She returns to work, this time co-founding an organization called Until Freedom that becomes involved in protests around the killing of Breonna Taylor during the Covid-19 pandemic. By the end of this journey, Mallory learns to care not just for her community but also for herself, concluding, “I was born fighting for freedom and I will die fighting for freedom—but this time freedom will include me.” This busy life story is full of passion, vulnerability, and light. At times, the sheer volume of events the author describes eclipses the emotional weight of certain moments. Overall, though, this is a deeply felt account.
A Black female activist’s gripping memoir.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781982173494
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Black Privilege Publishing/Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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