A stirring contribution to America’s historical narrative.
A great-granddaughter claims her legacy.
Investigating gaps in her family tree, Headlee (Speaking of Race, 2021) discovered a generation of Black women who devoted their lives to nurturing education and literacy as a means of racial uplift. Notable among them were her great-great-grandmother Anne Fambro, who scrimped to send her daughters to historically Black colleges and universities, and great-grandmother Carrie Still Shepperson, the central figure in this revelatory melding of memoir, biography, and Black history. Both women were born into slavery, and both believed that “resistance took the form of sharing knowledge, an act that was inherently threatening to power structures in the antebellum South.” Shepperson was one among many formerly enslaved people who built schools across the South, equipped them at their own expense, and established libraries. By 1869, nearly 3,000 schools served more than 150,000 students; by the end of the century, the illiteracy rate among Blacks was “virtually non-existent.” Widowed when her husband was murdered by the KKK in Mississippi, Shepperson moved with her 4-month-old son to Arkansas, where she involved herself in more than education: She became an activist for Black rights, participating in or leading between eight and 12 groups at any one time, including the NAACP. She remarried and set high expectations for her son, William. Although she wanted him to become a doctor, he was drawn to music, eventually becoming lauded as the “Dean of African American Composers.” In 1925, two years before her death, Shepperson was awarded the Madam C. J. Walker Prize by the NAACP for her accomplishments. Headlee’s dogged unearthing of buried truths revives a woman who has been unjustly ignored by historians, and she makes a persuasive case that many other Black women, like the indefatigable Shepperson, deserve to be celebrated.
A stirring contribution to America’s historical narrative.Pub Date: today
ISBN: 9781250340412
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
A football star’s bracing account of his battle for racial equality—and how powerful forces arrayed against him.
A principled athlete strives for social justice.
Kaepernick forthrightly details the activism that earned him global renown but cost him his NFL career. In 2016, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback “was filled with disgust” after police shootings of fellow Black men in several American cities. Before a preseason game, he made a spontaneous decision: “It hit me in that moment that I should find a seat” during the national anthem. He did the same at two more games before reporters noticed. Kaepernick will forever be associated with “taking a knee” during the anthem, but he credits Eric Reid—a teammate who agreed with Kaepernick’s message—for suggesting that they kneel together during subsequent anthems. The protest changed everything for Kaepernick. President Trump vilified him. Kaepernick and his wife received death threats. And though he’d taken the 49ers to a Super Bowl, no teams would sign him. He will likely make news for his take on Jay-Z, whose lucrative partnership with the NFL was criticized as an attempt to launder the league’s reputation. Visiting Africa, where Kaepernick learns about “African leaders who willingly sold their own people to the enslavers,” he “couldn’t help but to think about Jay-Z and the NFL.” In opening chapters, Kaepernick recalls suffering traumatic racial abuse as a child. Being in “white spaces”—he was adopted by white parents—placed him “under a microscope every minute of every day.” He isn’t always nuanced, depicting some people he disagrees with as cartoonishly clueless. But his writing about how college and pro teams “lied” to him about injuries underlines his “feeling of being a disposable commodity.” A decade has passed since Kaepernick played in the NFL, but he stays fit in case “a team needing a QB” calls.
A football star’s bracing account of his battle for racial equality—and how powerful forces arrayed against him.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781538777879
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Legacy Lit/Hachette
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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