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THERE'S A REVOLUTION OUTSIDE, MY LOVE

Name: THERE'S A REVOLUTION OUTSIDE, MY LOVE
Author: Tracy K. Smith
ISBN: 978-0-593-31469-2

LETTERS FROM A CRISIS

edited by Tracy K. Smith & John Freeman ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 11, 2021

An eloquent and urgent collection.

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Reflections on racism from 40 writers.

Pulitzer Prize winner Smith, former poet laureate of the U.S., and Freeman, an executive editor at Knopf, gather poems, letters, and essays, most previously published in Literary Hub, bearing witness to systemic oppression and racial injustice. Angry, rueful, and defiant, the impressive roster of award-winning writers and academics portrays a nation wracked by pain. “There’s a revolution outside, my love,” journalist and cultural critic Kirsten West Savali writes in a moving letter to her son. “Where in the world is safe for you, my beautiful, beautiful boy?” Jasmon Drain, addressing his daughter, reflects that during the pandemic, she must wear two masks: one, her skin color; the other, protection against the virus. “Your born mask brought fear. This new one redoubles it,” he writes. “There’s no vaccine for who you’ll be or how you’ll be viewed, for the unseen or visible parts that will ofttimes be assumed of you.” Protests against police brutality inspired many pieces: “Like an arrow,” writes Native American writer Layli Long Soldier, “the images of George Floyd pierced my soul.” Living in Madison, Wisconsin, where he teaches creative writing, poet Amaud Jamaul Johnson describes “the Fault Lines of Midwestern Racism”: insidious expressions of prejudice among Whites who treat him like “a kind of mascot, a pet Negro, that one Black body in the coffee shop or at the private pool; I’ve become everyone’s one Black friend.” Francisco Goldman compares racist dictators to Trump: “The aftereffects of an evil dictatorship are hard to get rid of, to scrub clean. It usually involves a steadfast struggle, and justice is the only remedy.” In “A Letter to Black America,” Smith invokes Black solidarity, exhorting her readers to “revel in the depth and the flair and the belief and the secrecy of Blackness. We are lucky to be who we are, and we know it.” Other contributors include Edwidge Danticat, Gregory Pardlo, Ross Gay, and Camille T. Dungy.

An eloquent and urgent collection.

Pub Date: May 11, 2021

ISBN: 978-0-593-31469-2

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Vintage

Review Posted Online: March 11, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021

Categories:

- BOOK REVIEW
TO FREE THE CAPTIVES
by Tracy K. Smith

- BOOK REVIEW
ORDINARY LIGHT
by Tracy K. Smith

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WAR

by Bob Woodward ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 15, 2024

An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.

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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

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | POLITICAL & ROYALTY

- BOOK REVIEW
PERIL
by Bob Woodward & Robert Costa

- BOOK REVIEW
RAGE
by Bob Woodward

- BOOK REVIEW
FEAR
by Bob Woodward

- IN THE NEWS
Book: Trump Secretly Sent Putin Covid-19 Tests

- PERSPECTIVES
New Political Books: Good, Bad, and Gratuitous

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THE MESSAGE

by Ta-Nehisi Coates ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2024

A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.

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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.