A centrist call to actively build—rather than passively critique—civic institutions.
The story of how Interfaith America founder Patel expanded his activism to become a nonprofit founder focused on building civic institutions.
The author, a former faith adviser to President Barack Obama, remembers himself as a young person who was always ready with an unsparing political and cultural assessment of any given situation. In college, he writes, he ruined a question-and-answer period after a student play by launching into a mean-spirited critique of the production. He expected his independent-study adviser to praise his incisive analysis. Instead, she sent him an email expressing her disappointment at his unnecessarily harsh reaction to the work, encouraging him to try creating something instead of just tearing other people down. Years later, Patel followed this advice—guidance he also received from a Mayan activist who heard Patel’s brutal criticism at an existing interfaith institution—and founded Interfaith America, an organization the author hopes will “be among the vital civic institutions engaging the great challenge and opportunity that is American religious diversity and moving the needle toward more widespread interfaith cooperation.” Patel then describes “the nitty gritty challenges” involved in institution building, and in conclusion, he pens a letter to his sons urging them to eschew anger and to avoid limiting their lives to critiquing others. “Tell a story of America where we all belong; build civic spaces where we can all contribute and feel connected,” he writes. “You want people who are being their worst selves to be their better selves. And truthfully, you want to be better too. All of us need to be better.” Activists may glean some useful tactics from the book, but the narrative is often disjointed, and Patel’s arguments about diversity and inclusion are not as forceful or cohesive as they were in his 2012 book, Sacred Ground: Pluralism, Prejudice, and the Promise of America.
A centrist call to actively build—rather than passively critique—civic institutions.Pub Date: May 10, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-8070-2406-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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