An inclusive, edifying, often fiery assembly of voices articulating the way forward for Black America—and America in general.
An expansive set of essays highlighting the range and force of Black leadership.
Opoku-Agyeman puts the point bluntly in her introduction: “Black experts matter now more than ever because they are not just critical to providing us with the tools and language to decipher a world bent on undermining Black life—they are also equipped to provide the backdrop of lived experience that further contextualizes their expertise. Experience is the difference between studying racial inequality and living through it.” Each contributor demonstrates the value of such perspectives on an impressively broad set of subjects: climate, health care, wellness, education, technology, criminal justice, the economy, and public policy. Such breadth exposes racist ideologies and practices in diverse areas of contemporary life while also drawing attention to their complex interrelations. As the essays make clear, understanding Black experiences and furthering anti-racist activism means accounting for the sequelae of any "isolated" phenomenon: Fair and effective responses to climate change, for instance, must involve consideration of systemic biases in such areas as housing, policing, and commerce. The contributors repeatedly underscore the urgency of such intersectional approaches during the pandemic, given its disproportionate impact on Black communities. Among the most instructive and stimulating essays in this collection are those that target rapidly evolving forms of racial discrimination, as in Deborah Raji’s examination of the embedded biases and blind spots of Amazon’s facial recognition technology. A particular strength of many of the essays, moreover, is their precision in identifying forms of resistance that have proven successful in the past and in speculating on those that hold special promise for the future. Cliff Albright’s exploration of voter suppression stands out in this regard. “Sustained direct action, including civil disobedience” will be necessary, he affirms, for the protection of voting rights. Tressie McMillan Cottom provides the foreword, and the recommended reading lists a trove of worthy books to further education.
An inclusive, edifying, often fiery assembly of voices articulating the way forward for Black America—and America in general.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27687-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
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
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
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