Memories of and musings on the relationships between women, from novelist Peterson (Duck and Cover, 1991, etc.). Sisters are the focus of this memoir cum study—the author's two biological sisters, Paula and Marla, her extended sisterhood of women friends, and even the nonhuman sisters she finds in a dolphin pod or a herd of elephants. Peterson searches wide and deep within her own past and those of others to fill in her complex picture of sisterhood. These relationships often involve caregiving—Marla and Paula are nurses, whereas the author, the eldest sister, has adopted the role of family nurturer—but they can be hurtful as well. Peterson devotes one chapter to the breakup of a friendship with one of her ``chosen'' sisters, a cruel and arbitrary rift that she still doesn't understand, though several years have passed. Peterson also describes how she and her sisters were abused throughout their childhood by their mother. On the other hand, she is exclusive of men but for the most part nonbelligerent toward them. Her father was largely absentee, while her younger brother, the father of four girls, is comfortable with women and women's bonds. A few of Peterson's stories and characters stand out: Paula's neurosurgery and how her sisters coaxed her back from a coma; the Crones, a group of postmenopausal women who share the secrets of aging and companionship with great good humor and sensitivity; and a raucous slumber party for women well beyond adolescence. Other pieces are less successful, and finding out that Peterson is bisexual two-thirds through the book, one feels at first betrayed, as if the preceding ruminations on sisterhood have become retroactively incestuous. (For more on this topic, see Sister to Sister, edited by Patricia Foster, p. 1467.) But despite this unwonted secrecy and the book's New Age tinge, this is clearly a labor of love that is both thoughtful and touching.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-670-85296-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
A sleek, vital history that effectively shows how, “from the outset, inequality was enforced with the whip, the gun, and the...
A concise, alternate history of the United States “about how people across the hemisphere wove together antislavery, anticolonial, pro-freedom, and pro-working-class movements against tremendous obstacles.”
In the latest in the publisher’s ReVisioning American History series, Ortiz (History/Univ. of Florida; Emancipation Betrayed: The Hidden History of Black Organizing and White Violence in Florida from Reconstruction to the Bloody Election of 1920, 2005, etc.) examines U.S. history through the lens of African-American and Latinx activists. Much of the American history taught in schools is limited to white America, leaving out the impact of non-European immigrants and indigenous peoples. The author corrects that error in a thorough look at the debt of gratitude we owe to the Haitian Revolution, the Mexican War of Independence, and the Cuban War of Independence, all struggles that helped lead to social democracy. Ortiz shows the history of the workers for what it really was: a fatal intertwining of slavery, racial capitalism, and imperialism. He states that the American Revolution began as a war of independence and became a war to preserve slavery. Thus, slavery is the foundation of American prosperity. With the end of slavery, imperialist America exported segregation laws and labor discrimination abroad. As we moved into Cuba, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico, we stole their land for American corporations and used the Army to enforce draconian labor laws. This continued in the South and in California. The rise of agriculture could not have succeeded without cheap labor. Mexican workers were often preferred because, if they demanded rights, they could just be deported. Convict labor worked even better. The author points out the only way success has been gained is by organizing; a great example was the “Day without Immigrants” in 2006. Of course, as Ortiz rightly notes, much more work is necessary, especially since Jim Crow and Juan Crow are resurging as each political gain is met with “legal” countermeasures.
A sleek, vital history that effectively shows how, “from the outset, inequality was enforced with the whip, the gun, and the United States Constitution.”Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-8070-1310-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 9, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2017
Gioia, musician and critic, winner of the ASCAPDeems Taylor Award for The Imperfect Art (not reviewed) takes on a daunting task, tracing the history of jazz from preCivil War New Orleans to the embattled music of today—and does a creditable job of it. Jazz's history has been written by entirely too many mythographers and polemicists. Gioia, mercifully, spares us the myths and polemics. ``The Africanization of American music,'' as he calls it, begins farther back in American history than New Orleans's aptly named Storyville red-light district around the turn of the century; he starts his narrative in the slave market of the city's Congo Square in 1819, and when it comes to Storyville, he offers hard facts to puncture the picturesque racism that finds jazz's roots in the whorehouses of New Orleans. Indeed, one of the great strengths of Gioia's account is the sociohistorical insights it offers, albeit occasionally as throwaway sidelights, such as his observation about drumming as an avatar of regimentation more than of freedom. He is particularly good in explaining how the music was disseminated and shaped by new technologies—the player piano, the phonograph, radio. He is also excellent at drawing a portrait of a musician's style in short brushstrokes. His prose is for the most part fluid and even graceful (although his metaphors do get a bit strained at times, as in his comparison of Don Redman's ``jagged, pointillistic'' arrangement of ``The Whiteman Stomp'' and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle). Although Gioia is much too generous to jazz-rock fusion of the '70s and '80s and probably gives more space than necessary to white dance bands like the Casa Loma orchestra, if you wanted to introduce someone to jazz with a single book, this would be a good choice. (9 b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-19-509081-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1997
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