A poignant and profoundly relevant examination of society’s safe places.
In this essay collection, Kalfopoulou explores the notion of refuge in all its varied facets.
“Embedded in the word refugee is refuge,” the author notes in the opening lines of one of this anthology’s 14 pieces, adding that refuges consist of “the familiar and tangible, until these locations are also (dis)placed.” In this genre-defying book, the author—a poet, essayist, and educator based in Athens, Greece—blends memoir, verse, literary criticism, and biting social commentary in essays that are united in their exploration of the human quest for a safe haven. This includes the safety of romantic relationships, but the collection is at its best when applying the notion to contemporary geopolitics—particularly Europe’s increasingly draconian policies toward refugees over the last decade and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The opening poem, “In shā Allāh,” for example, centers stories of Middle Eastern people facing the perils of Europe’s closed borders, from unscrupulous smugglers who “smell profit at the port” to unsafe boats “sunk with people who sold everything for some luck.” Many essays connect autobiographical vignettes to world events, including one that tells of how refugees have reshaped the author’s home city of Athens. She also grapples with the dichotomy of teaching the “freedom” of creative writing to students living during unprecedented global upheaval. Other essays explore aspects of Kalfopoulou’s visits to the United States, from a discussion of police brutality with a friend in Los Angeles (where the “the assumptions of white supremacy [are] still supremely assumed”) to an encounter with religion-based antigay bigotry in North Carolina. A photographic essay, “The Parts Don’t Add Up, an assemblage,” suggests that the concept of refuge doesn’t just relate to a physical home, but also to a place where one can safely cling to one’s culture. The rest of the book is also peppered with full-color photographs, mostly by the author, which interrupt the text in a manner that makes for a poignant, if sometimes-fragmented, read. Overall, it’s a distinctly literary work replete with searing indictments of the West, accompanied by multiple pages of scholarly references.
A poignant and profoundly relevant examination of society’s safe places.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781636282763
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Red Hen Press
Review Posted Online: July 31, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
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SEEN & HEARD
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
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BOOK REVIEW
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