An erudite analysis of Jamaica’s economic history.
A Jamaican scholar’s debut work analyzes the impact of neoliberalism on recent Jamaican history.
McKenzie, who was born and raised in Jamaica and is currently a doctoral student at Georgetown University, begins this work with an exceptionally useful primer on the history of his native country from the arrival of Christopher Columbus to later British imperialism, the World War II era, and decolonization. Jamaica, he says, is a capitalist nation “centered on a culture of servitude where tourism, hospitality, sports, and music are the main sources of income,” and the blame for its currently stagnant economy, he asserts, lies squarely with neoliberal policies, which focus on free market capitalism and deregulation—both inside the nation’s bureaucracy and its nominal Western allies’. Early chapters highlight how “neoliberal technocrats” forged a “Washington Consensus” inside Jamaica’s government that perpetuated, and even exacerbated, poverty for more than half a century. The book’s second half pays particular attention to how international events since the 1980s—from the elections of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher to the global ascendance of the Black Lives Matter movement—intersected with Jamaica’s economic and social history. The author gives the ideas of Pan-African thinkers, including Frantz Fanon, ample attention and analysis, as well as those of Black Nationalists, such as Jamaican Marcus Garvey, whom the author critiques for his “Fascist ideological roots” and embrace of “Western-style capitalism.” This well-researched, interdisciplinary volume makes its points in passionate and learned prose, and McKenzie shows an expert command of relevant scholarship by historians, economists, and social theorists. The tour de force narrative unfortunately wanes in its final chapter, which examines solutions to neoliberalism using references to the 2002 film Dirty Pretty Things—an anticlimactic ending that doesn’t meet the high bar set by the previous 10 chapters. Nonetheless, this book as a whole provides important commentary and critical context on its subject.
An erudite analysis of Jamaica’s economic history.Pub Date: May 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-0578-89794-3
Page Count: 346
Publisher: Palmetto Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A top-notch political memoir and serious exercise in practical politics for every reader.
In the first volume of his presidential memoir, Obama recounts the hard path to the White House.
In this long, often surprisingly candid narrative, Obama depicts a callow youth spent playing basketball and “getting loaded,” his early reading of difficult authors serving as a way to impress coed classmates. (“As a strategy for picking up girls, my pseudo-intellectualism proved mostly worthless,” he admits.) Yet seriousness did come to him in time and, with it, the conviction that America could live up to its stated aspirations. His early political role as an Illinois state senator, itself an unlikely victory, was not big enough to contain Obama’s early ambition, nor was his term as U.S. Senator. Only the presidency would do, a path he painstakingly carved out, vote by vote and speech by careful speech. As he writes, “By nature I’m a deliberate speaker, which, by the standards of presidential candidates, helped keep my gaffe quotient relatively low.” The author speaks freely about the many obstacles of the race—not just the question of race and racism itself, but also the rise, with “potent disruptor” Sarah Palin, of a know-nothingism that would manifest itself in an obdurate, ideologically driven Republican legislature. Not to mention the meddlings of Donald Trump, who turns up in this volume for his idiotic “birther” campaign while simultaneously fishing for a contract to build “a beautiful ballroom” on the White House lawn. A born moderate, Obama allows that he might not have been ideological enough in the face of Mitch McConnell, whose primary concern was then “clawing [his] way back to power.” Indeed, one of the most compelling aspects of the book, as smoothly written as his previous books, is Obama’s cleareyed scene-setting for how the political landscape would become so fractured—surely a topic he’ll expand on in the next volume.
A top-notch political memoir and serious exercise in practical politics for every reader.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6316-9
Page Count: 768
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
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