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
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
