by Vicky Osterweil ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 25, 2020
An argument that, while debatable and occasionally strident, is worth hearing out.
A charged, controversial manifesto in support of rioting and looting as instruments of rebellion.
Rioting and looting, writes Osterweil, bring liberals and conservatives into agreement: Conservatives root for the police while liberals, “because their love for law and order is much greater than their belief in freedom,” dismiss looters as bringing destruction on their own community. The thought that liberals are more committed to law and order than to freedom seems inapposite, the kind of thing radicals say to denigrate those less fervently committed to the cause. However, Osterweil scores points by noting, with particular respect to the weekslong riots in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, that the inner-city proletariat seldom owns any real property in their own communities and that “the same white liberals who inveigh against corporations for destroying local communities are aghast when rioters take their critique to its actual material conclusion.” Considering looting to be an impromptu means of wealth redistribution that she likens, curiously and unpersuasively, to the potlatch of Native peoples in the Pacific Northwest, Osterweil also describes it as an undeniable way to draw attention. Mounting a so-called peaceful protest will simply result in being ignored, and regardless, “there is no such thing as peace under current conditions. Social peace is just the condition under which patriarchal white supremacist violence is acting most fluidly and most thoroughly and is distributed most invisibly. When the white supremacist violence appears in the streets, it is not an aberration or a dramatic change of direction: it is a continuation of the world as it is in more direct, open terms.” The author’s long disquisitions on the history of slavery and lynching are accurate but not entirely necessary to her argument that nonviolence plays into the hands of the powerful.
An argument that, while debatable and occasionally strident, is worth hearing out.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64503-669-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Bold Type Books
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
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by Alok Vaid-Menon ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 2, 2020
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
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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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by Timothy Snyder ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 17, 2024
An incisive, urgently relevant analysis of—and call to action on—America’s foundational ideal.
An examination of how the U.S. can revitalize its commitment to freedom.
In this ambitious study, Snyder, author of On Tyranny, The Road to Unfreedom, and other books, explores how American freedom might be reconceived not simply in negative terms—as freedom from coercion, especially by the state—but positive ones: the freedom to develop our human potential within sustaining communal structures. The author blends extensive personal reflections on his own evolving understanding of liberty with definitions of the concept by a range of philosophers, historians, politicians, and social activists. Americans, he explains, often wrongly assume that freedom simply means the removal of some barrier: “An individual is free, we think, when the government is out of the way. Negative freedom is our common sense.” In his careful and impassioned description of the profound implications of this conceptual limitation, Snyder provides a compelling account of the circumstances necessary for the realization of positive freedom, along with a set of detailed recommendations for specific sociopolitical reforms and policy initiatives. “We have to see freedom as positive, as beginning from virtues, as shared among people, and as built into institutions,” he writes. The author argues that it’s absurd to think of government as the enemy of freedom; instead, we ought to reimagine how a strong government might focus on creating the appropriate conditions for human flourishing and genuine liberty. Another essential and overlooked element of freedom is the fostering of a culture of solidarity, in which an awareness of and concern for the disadvantaged becomes a guiding virtue. Particularly striking and persuasive are the sections devoted to eviscerating the false promises of libertarianism, exposing the brutal injustices of the nation’s penitentiaries, and documenting the wide-ranging pathologies that flow from a tax system favoring the ultrawealthy.
An incisive, urgently relevant analysis of—and call to action on—America’s foundational ideal.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9780593728727
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
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