Essays by women of color offer intimate, candid reflections on their lives.
Santana gathers an articulate, often moving collection of essays focused on cultural and gender identity, the meaning of home, work experiences, social justice, family and friendship, beauty, sexuality, illness, and journeys. Many of the contributors are Californians, either by birth or adoption, and reflect on their affinity for—or estrangement from—the communities in which they live, work, and raise their children. Brief biographies follow each essay, summarizing the writer’s accomplishments; still, despite achievements as writers, educators, and activists, most are likely to be unfamiliar to general readers. Among the recognizable names are actress America Ferrera, represented by an excerpt from her speech at the Women’s March in Washington on Jan. 21, 2017; Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children’s Defense Fund, who celebrates the “great heritage of strength, courage, faith and belief” demonstrated by social reformers; Emmy Award–winning newscaster Belva Davis, whose essay takes the form of a letter to her granddaughter, urging her “to move through life with no barriers”; and novelist Natalie Baszile, who writes of her connection to Louisiana, where her father grew up. Fulbright scholar Ethel Morgan Smith writes about her friendship with the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, a relationship that foundered over Smith’s respect for Barack Obama and Angela Davis. Exasperated, Smith told her friend “she didn’t own all of the pain in history.” Pain is a recurring theme in essays that consider racism, xenophobia, and inequality. Black Latina Nuris Terrero reveals the challenges she faced as a single mother determined to break the cycle of violence that blighted her own family. Art historian Terezita Romo speaks to the need for “inclusive American art” in museums. “There are some moments in history,” essayist Hope Wabuke asserts, when writers “have a responsibility to look. To bear witness.” Other contributors include Jennifer De Leon, V.V. Ganeshananthan, and Porochista Khakpour.
Impassioned writers bearing witness to survival, creativity, and hope.Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9972962-1-1
Page Count: 366
Publisher: Nothing But The Truth Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 24, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2017
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A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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