An honest accounting by a patriot seeking “a deliberate national discourse on what actually makes America great.”
An American diplomat chronicles the joys and perils of her trade, working in Africa, and the many failures of U.S. foreign policy.
Shackelford may have spent less than a decade as a diplomat with the U.S. Foreign Service, but her tales about practicing diplomacy between the shifting priorities and alignments of the State Department and the White House are powerful—and terrifying—nonetheless. After an initial stint in Warsaw, she got her “dream assignment” in Juba, the capital and largest city in the newly independent Republic of South Sudan. “I wanted to be in Africa,” she writes. “I wanted to experience diplomacy on the front lines. I wanted to help a post-conflict country find stability and prosperity. I was naïve. I was looking for a real challenge, something unique. Juba was it.” Despite her inexperience, Shackelford’s compassion for the locals and dexterity in navigating the complexities of interfactional conflicts earned her pervasive respect—and later garnered the State Department’s highest award for consular work. The primary narrative thread is the bloody civil war between newly elected President Salva Kiir and his former vice president, Riek Machar. The author chronicles her desperate attempts to save civilians while drafting sharply worded cables urging the State Department to investigate war crimes. Between these disconcerting dispatches, Shackelford offers a condensed history of U.S. foreign policy that is nonpartisan but also painfully direct as well as pointed criticisms of the system under which she worked: “Could we have prevented war in 2013? Likely not. But we could have prevented our complicity, and mitigated the scale of suffering by championing our values and condemning human rights violations and anti-democratic actions.” The author also discusses her resignation after submitting a “dissent cable,” the last resort for any diplomat to push back against grievous misdeeds.
An honest accounting by a patriot seeking “a deliberate national discourse on what actually makes America great.”Pub Date: May 12, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5417-2448-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 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
© 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
