A rousing call for political action—and, not coincidentally, to vote for the author.
The Texas politician places his progressive gubernatorial campaign against a backdrop of voter and civil rights activism.
Thanks to a law signed by his opponent, Greg Abbott, in 2021, O’Rourke argues convincingly that it is now more difficult to vote in Texas than in any other state. This law and allied legislation, of course, were the result of the Trumpian trope that the 2020 election was stolen, and the votes so denied were those of non-White citizens, especially Black voters. “This accelerating attack on the right to vote is alarming but is not out of rhyme with what has come before,” writes the author, whose title comes from an early voter rights activist in his native El Paso, a Black doctor named Lawrence Aaron Nixon who paid his poll tax annually and yet was not allowed to vote. Neither were any other Black or Hispanic voters, and when the Supreme Court ruled that this violated the 14th Amendment, Texas responded by passing laws that allowed political parties to determine who could cast a vote for their candidates. Richard Nixon persisted, and he “did what he knew had to be done,” writes O’Rourke, adding, “now that we find ourselves facing the greatest threat to democracy since the crucial battles of the civil rights era, and nowhere more so than in Texas, we must look to the heroes of our past to guide us toward the victories that our country needs.” The author’s heroes are many, but he keeps his eye resolutely on the present and future, offering ideas for how to thwart the Texas GOP’s current campaign of voter suppression, outlining a platform that includes health care and justice reform and changes in immigration policy “to reflect current demands and challenges”—not to mention “to organize pro-democracy Texans wherever I [can] find them.”
A rousing call for political action—and, not coincidentally, to vote for the author.Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-85245-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
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 welcome call to grow up and cut out the whining.
The New York Times columnist serves up a cogent argument for shelving the grudge and sucking it up.
In 1976, Tom Wolfe described the “me decade” as a pit of mindless narcissism. A half century later, Bruni, author of Born Round and other bestselling books, calls for a renaming: “‘Me Turning Point’ would have been more accurate, because the period of time since has been a nonstop me jamboree.” Our present cultural situation, he notes, is marked by constant grievance and endless grasping. The ensuing blame game has its pros. Donald Trump, he notes, “became a victor by playing the victim, and his most impassioned oratory, such as it was, focused not on the good that he could do for others but on the bad supposedly done to him.” Bruni is an unabashed liberal, and while he places most of the worst behavior on the right—he opens with Sean Hannity’s bleating lie that the Biden administration was diverting scarce baby formula from needy Americans to illegal immigrants—he also allows that the left side of the aisle has committed its share of whining. A case in point: the silencing of a professor for showing an image of Mohammed to art students, neither religiously proscribed nor done without ample warning, but complained about by self-appointed student censors. Still, “not all grievances are created equal,” he writes. “There is January 6, 2021, and there is everything else. Attempts by leaders on the right to minimize what happened that day and lump it together with protests on the left are as ludicrous as they are dangerous.” Whether from left or right, Bruni calls for a dose of humility on the part of all: “an amalgam of kindness, openness, and silliness might be an effective solvent for grievance.”
A welcome call to grow up and cut out the whining.Pub Date: April 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781668016435
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
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