Both maddening and funny, an eye-opening look at how its daily targets cope with racism.
Comedy writer Ruffin recounts the endless indignities involved in being a Black woman in America, with her older sister as foil.
The Ruffin sisters grew up with a mother who “has a bad case of the smarts…and…isn’t fond of people messing with her children”—messing that comes daily from the White residents of Omaha, Nebraska, a city, Ruffin reminds us, that may sound like Hicksville, USA, but is larger than New Orleans, Pittsburgh, and Minneapolis. Those White citizens think nothing of using the N-word, nor of touching Black women’s hair, nor of assuming that the Black residents of Omaha are violent and thievish. The latter assumptions build in ways that the sisters find sometimes amusing, sometimes hurtful, always astonishingly awful. Lamar—who remained in Omaha while Ruffin moved to New York, where she writes for Late Night With Seth Meyers—recounts a trip to a store when a friend asked about the cost of a Rolex on display. Told “expensive,” her friend replied, “Bitch, I’ll take two.” Lamar got the same response when she asked about a coffee table and then was floored when the manager informed her of the hardly shattering price tag of $200. Some indignities are nearly inexplicable: One man tried an online come-on with a Confederate flag as backdrop; an elementary school teacher attributed slavery to keeping-up-with-the-Joneses peer pressure. “The reaction always varies because you can only put up with what you can put up with when you can put up with it,” writes Ruffin. “And here’s a little reminder that we shouldn’t have to put up with this shit AT ALL!” Most of the time, the sisters’ reactions are a kind of knowing exasperation. “We are not into trying to educate white America, but maybe we accidentally did,” they conclude. The education is no accident, and White readers can certainly use the wake-up call.
Both maddening and funny, an eye-opening look at how its daily targets cope with racism.Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5387-1936-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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