by Denis Mukwege ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 16, 2021
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
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by Bob Woodward ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 15, 2024
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
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by Ta-Nehisi Coates ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2024
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
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