Convincing, creatively effective arguments for the dismantling of mass incarceration.
A critique of the many misconceptions about prisons in the U.S.
In her cogent analysis, journalist and criminal justice activist Law dissects the myths that blur what she asserts is the true reality about mass incarceration in the U.S. The author attributes the 500% prison population explosion in recent decades to tougher criminal policies and increased public demand for harsher sentences. In a four-part study, the author scrutinizes the numerous gray areas regarding incarceration, incorporating a wealth of supporting research, startling statistical data, and illuminating interviews and anecdotal material. Law digs into the shady practices of private prison corporations and thoroughly debunks the myth that incarceration delivers much-needed social and mental health services to inmates. In fact, she writes, incarceration pulls energy and resources away from underfunded social services. The author explores the history of prisons as a form of racialized social control and counters theories that they protect people from high rates of crime. She also contradicts falsehoods regarding the effectiveness of prison sentences for sex offenders and lays bare the inequity of treatment involving women, LGBTQ+ people, and those in immigrant detention, groups that are commonly omitted from broader discussions about incarceration. Law concludes with arguments for the abolition of prisons and the efficacy of restorative justice, “a process that centers on the victim and their needs, not only allowing them to have a voice in the proceedings but also addressing the needs that they have.” Though Law’s arguments are well-documented and persuasive, the most effective parts of the narrative are the personal stories of inmates struggling with a wide range of significant issues. The author also pitches ideas for resolving many of the conundrums she discusses, and her knowledgeable text presents a good opportunity for healthy, productive debate among proponents and dissenters alike.
Convincing, creatively effective arguments for the dismantling of mass incarceration.Pub Date: April 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-8070-2952-7
Page Count: 230
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
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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