For readers on the hunt for a fictional account of a contemporary political dispute, this is a competent if not inspiring...
Debut author Victoria’s topical thriller follows the political and personal reverberations of a tough and controversial immigration law in California.
Newly elected California Gov. Michael DiGrasso doggedly pursues the passage of a law that would make his state inhospitable to illegal immigrants and stanch their flow over porous borders. He encounters opposition from multiple quarters: Senate Minority Leader Elizabeth Stern proves a devious and underhanded adversary, while a radical group of subterranean political activists, the Reconquistas, look to undermine DiGrasso through both targeted and mass violence. Even the Supreme Court takes a swing, declaring the new law unconstitutional. Undaunted, DiGrasso presses on, defying the Supreme Court and igniting a tempestuous national debate on the proper role of the federal courts. Meanwhile, the story tracks the embattled lives of two Mexican families, struggling to make a home in a country that promises opportunity but denies them the stability of citizenship. Victoria does a deft job drawing out the human context of a legislative tug of war, detailing the many ways public discourse misses the complex consequences of major policy. And while the narrator clearly favors a conservative interpretation of the issue, he avoids any ideological axe-grinding or simplistic caricatures. The story unfolds at a brisk pace but sometimes flirts with haste, glossing over major developments that, if depicted in detail, could have deepened the drama. Also, while the prose is never clunky or turgid, it’s never transcendent either. At times, the content of the debate regarding judicial review borders on didactic but, for readers looking for a constitutional primer on federalism wrapped in fictional drama, those sections of the novel might be more enlightening than pedantic.
For readers on the hunt for a fictional account of a contemporary political dispute, this is a competent if not inspiring option.Pub Date: June 15, 2012
ISBN: 978-0984655908
Page Count: 192
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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