An excellent choice for readers interested in religion, philosophy and the elusive concept of home.
Rather than a simple analysis of where scattered Africans ended up geographically, Raboteau (The Professor’s Daughter, 2006) dissects the search for home as a search for belonging.
No quest for home is ever limited to a simple place, and the author evokes that reality beautifully by focusing on the spiritual aspect of the search for many of African descent. In this way, she gives the diaspora both historical and contemporary context. As a mixed-race woman, Raboteau embodies the quest for a sense of self, and she explains her personal dilemma early on. “I didn’t think of myself as the ‘tragic mulatto,’ straight out of central casting,” she writes. “The role was an embarrassing cliché from a dusty, bygone era, but I struggled against it all the same. If Barack Obama could transcend it, why couldn’t I? I belonged nowhere. I wasn’t well. Was the sickness my own, my country’s, or a combination of the two?” Stories of her disaffected youth spent with a Jewish friend lead easily into the beginning of the author’s global search party. Her first travels took her to Israel, where she learned of a large community of black Jews from Ethiopia. From Israel and the Jewish faith, she moved to explore the Rasta faith in Jamaica and then in Africa. Raboteau explored other issues of identity in Africa, as well, including African-Americans who settled in African cities and the genesis of trans-Atlantic slavery. The author never shies away from the difficult questions surrounding her—e.g., the Rasta worship of a dictator or the inherent double standards of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Her head-on confrontation of these subjects makes the book easier to digest, and her treatment of the issues results in the unwritten conclusion that none of the communities she visited truly accomplished what they set out to do. In the end, the author found her answers in a way that many will see coming, but Raboteau approaches the conclusion from a fresh perspective that keeps it from feeling stale.
An excellent choice for readers interested in religion, philosophy and the elusive concept of home.Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-8021-2003-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.
Four decades after Watergate shook America, journalist Woodward (The Price of Politics, 2012, etc.) returns to the scandal to profile Alexander Butterfield, the Richard Nixon aide who revealed the existence of the Oval Office tapes and effectively toppled the presidency.
Of all the candidates to work in the White House, Butterfield was a bizarre choice. He was an Air Force colonel and wanted to serve in Vietnam. By happenstance, his colleague H.R. Haldeman helped Butterfield land a job in the Nixon administration. For three years, Butterfield worked closely with the president, taking on high-level tasks and even supervising the installation of Nixon’s infamous recording system. The writing here is pure Woodward: a visual, dialogue-heavy, blow-by-blow account of Butterfield’s tenure. The author uses his long interviews with Butterfield to re-create detailed scenes, which reveal the petty power plays of America’s most powerful men. Yet the book is a surprisingly funny read. Butterfield is passive, sensitive, and dutiful, the very opposite of Nixon, who lets loose a constant stream of curses, insults, and nonsensical bluster. Years later, Butterfield seems conflicted about his role in such an eccentric presidency. “I’m not trying to be a Boy Scout and tell you I did it because it was the right thing to do,” Butterfield concedes. It is curious to see Woodward revisit an affair that now feels distantly historical, but the author does his best to make the story feel urgent and suspenseful. When Butterfield admitted to the Senate Select Committee that he knew about the listening devices, he felt its significance. “It seemed to Butterfield there was absolute silence and no one moved,” writes Woodward. “They were still and quiet as if they were witnessing a hinge of history slowly swinging open….It was as if a bare 10,000 volt cable was running through the room, and suddenly everyone touched it at once.”
Less a sequel than an addendum, the book offers a close-up view of the Oval Office in its darkest hour.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1644-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2015
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