An important, deeply affecting account of the invaluable work of a devoted humanitarian.
The Congolese gynecologist who won the 2018 Nobel Prize for aiding rape victims during the civil wars in his country depicts his inspiring journey.
A self-proclaimed feminist who often has to justify his chosen profession and life’s work to officers at the U.N. and elsewhere, Mukwege offers an impassioned argument for women’s health care and basic universal human rights. He bases the narrative on his experiences with the ravages of war, colonization, poverty, and ignorance in his own country. The author opens in his hometown of Bukavu, near the border with Rwanda. He chronicles his childhood with parents who largely eschewed the traditional roles ascribed to boys and girls, roles that devalued women’s work in the home and fields. Once he began to work with patients, Mukwege soon recognized the enormous need for women’s health care in a country with few medical doctors but high maternal and child mortality rates. After training in France, he returned to direct a hospital and then build another one in the countryside to address the catastrophic toll of rape during the civil wars that began in the late 1990s. Mukwege became an expert in obstetric fistula, and thousands of women came to him for life-saving treatment after suffering sexual violence. In his moving account of his courageous work, the author spares no detail, demonstrating the indispensable assistance he and his colleagues provided to traumatized survivors. As he writes, he sought out this work in order to combat the stigmatization and isolation of rape victims, despite the threat of death to himself and his family. “Breaking the silence about sexual violence in all its forms—harassment, rape, incest—is the essential first step in tackling the problem,” he writes. All along, he argues forcefully for the necessity of changing the education and mindsets of men throughout the world.
An important, deeply affecting account of the invaluable work of a devoted humanitarian.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-250-76919-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: An Oprah Book/Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2021
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
