The myriad topics sometimes blur together, but the discussion is astute and relevant.
The follow-up to Targeting Iran (2007).
In a Q&A format about the continued demonization of Iran by the U.S., Barsamian enlists the expertise of five longtime observers: Noam Chomsky, Azadeh Moaveni, Trita Parsi, Ervand Abrahamian, and Nader Hashemi. In the wake of the Trump administration's canceling of Obama's Iran nuclear deal (aka the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, adopted in 2015) as well as the recent U.S. assassination of a prominent Iranian general, Barsamian gets at the key to the deterioration of the relationship between the two nations. His expert contributors dig into a variety of topics: the general breakdown in relations since Iran’s Islamic Revolution of 1979; the failure of U.S. sanctions; the gains in education and civil rights for women in Iran even as censorship and repression have tightened; and the outsized role of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Parsi, who advised Obama on the JCPOA deal, notes the role Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had in unwittingly pushing the agreement along: "He thought that he could force the U.S. to take military action, but he underestimated Obama and he misread the American public, which has been adamantly against another war." Abrahamian, author and professor emeritus of Iranian and Middle Eastern history and politics, offers a wise overview of Iran, its history, and political makeup. Longtime MIT professor Chomsky argues that the U.S. has no right to impose sanctions on Iran or force it to "capitulate" in any way. Furthermore, he notes, the U.S. under Trump is now “the world’s leading rogue state.” Moaveni, a journalist, writer (Lipstick Jihad, etc.), and academic, speaks on women and society, and Hashemi, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver, discusses Iranian politics and the reform movement, noting that “we are now witnessing the worst moment in U.S.–Iran relations in over forty years.”
The myriad topics sometimes blur together, but the discussion is astute and relevant.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-87286-804-5
Page Count: 200
Publisher: City Lights
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 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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