An illuminating, sympathetic, and cautionary celebration of superfans, young and old.
An appreciative assessment of how “girls and young queer people create modern mainstream music and fan cultures with their outlooks and actions.”
VICE features editor Ewens probes the phenomenon of fan bases comprised primarily of girls and women, an important subculture within the music industry that she believes is misunderstood. Often, writes the author, the experience of fandom feels like the gathering of a like-minded collective with the unique ability to empower and identify with each other and to “scream alone together.” Ewens covers a wide swath of territory: holding down a sleeping bag in a ticket line at a London venue at 3 a.m.; interviewing older devotees of Courtney Love and Amy Winehouse as well as sexagenarian Beatles groupies; and watching the allegiant “emotional assembly line of girls” after a solo Frank Iero (My Chemical Romance) concert. The author expertly brings out the reality of their passion and devotion, and she reveals the often underappreciated interdependent relationship between musicians and fans. Adding a personal layer to the narrative, Ewens writes about her teenage years spent longing to “self-define” with connections to artistic cultures, specifically music, which seemed to buffer “everything hideous that was happening to me as a teenage girl.” The author also explores how fandom can blur sexual boundaries, and she zeroes in on the celebrated fan bases of certain megastars—e.g., Lady Gaga and her cherished “little monsters” and Beyoncé and her “Beyhive” collective. Refreshingly, Ewens shows readers that it’s not all wristbands and official merchandise. Somberly, she discusses the fervent fears of parents for their obsessive daughters, particularly in light of events such as the 2017 terrorist attack at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, which killed 23 people. Offering a welcome new perspective on music fandom, the author effectively captures the solidarity of fans bound by their love of music.
An illuminating, sympathetic, and cautionary celebration of superfans, young and old.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4773-2209-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Univ. of Texas
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2020
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
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.
A thoughtful program for eradicating poverty from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted.
“America’s poverty is not for lack of resources,” writes Desmond. “We lack something else.” That something else is compassion, in part, but it’s also the lack of a social system that insists that everyone pull their weight—and that includes the corporations and wealthy individuals who, the IRS estimates, get away without paying upward of $1 trillion per year. Desmond, who grew up in modest circumstances and suffered poverty in young adulthood, points to the deleterious effects of being poor—among countless others, the precarity of health care and housing (with no meaningful controls on rent), lack of transportation, the constant threat of losing one’s job due to illness, and the need to care for dependent children. It does not help, Desmond adds, that so few working people are represented by unions or that Black Americans, even those who have followed the “three rules” (graduate from high school, get a full-time job, wait until marriage to have children), are far likelier to be poor than their White compatriots. Furthermore, so many full-time jobs are being recast as contracted, fire-at-will gigs, “not a break from the norm as much as an extension of it, a continuation of corporations finding new ways to limit their obligations to workers.” By Desmond’s reckoning, besides amending these conditions, it would not take a miracle to eliminate poverty: about $177 billion, which would help end hunger and homelessness and “make immense headway in driving down the many agonizing correlates of poverty, like violence, sickness, and despair.” These are matters requiring systemic reform, which will in turn require Americans to elect officials who will enact that reform. And all of us, the author urges, must become “poverty abolitionists…refusing to live as unwitting enemies of the poor.” Fortune 500 CEOs won’t like Desmond’s message for rewriting the social contract—which is precisely the point.
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 9780593239919
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
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