Civil libertarians will find this a valuable tool for mounting arguments in defense of free choice.
A full-throated defense of self-aware, voluntary drug use.
Hart, the first tenured African American professor of sciences at Columbia University and former psychology department head, calls himself “an unapologetic drug user.” His formulary is extensive, and it is likely only because he’s tenured that he so readily admits to a liking for—but not addiction to—heroin, along with an overstuffed medicine cabinet full of other substances. His book has two overarching purposes. The first is to argue that the grown-ups of his title can indeed use drugs of varying descriptions—mostly marijuana, likely, but up to and including methamphetamines and opioids—and still be responsible parents and citizens. As the author suggests, millions of grown-ups already do so, and despite all the warnings and admonitions against it, by Hart’s lights even pregnant women can use a little here and there without being or producing monsters. “It doesn’t matter whether the drug is alcohol, caffeine, tobacco, or weed,” he writes of the last point. “Consumption of any of these substances should be taken in consultation with a health-care professional and should be limited.” His second large point is that the classification of drug use and public-health and law enforcement attitudes toward it is thoroughly racialized: Crack cocaine use was considered an epidemic evil when minorities, especially Black people, were using it. However, when it developed that “most crack users were white, and most drug users bought their drugs from dealers within their own racial group,” the epidemic became one of concern rather than fear. Hart’s openness in admitting to the use, often by way of experimentation, of drugs ranging from MDMA to methamphetamine and hexedrone and beyond is admirable, but doubtless, his thesis that taking drugs should be a matter of private choice alone will meet with considerable resistance.
Civil libertarians will find this a valuable tool for mounting arguments in defense of free choice.Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-101-98164-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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