An erudite collection to alarm conservatives and gratify progressives.
Penetrating essays on race and social stratification within policing and the law, in honor of pioneering scholar Derrick Bell (1930-2011).
At the beginning, the editors explain the anthology’s genesis: “Founded twenty-five years ago in 1995, the Derrick Bell Lectures were originally created as a birthday present from Janet Bell to her husband, and were designed to highlight not only Derrick Bell’s legacy as the father of the legal studies movement, but also to give that movement exposure in the academy and beyond.” Some speakers acknowledged Bell’s outsized personality; he’d repeatedly resigned from prestigious institutions to protest wan diversity efforts. Charles Ogletree notes, “the craziness is that he has such insight and foresight that it’s unimaginable,” before narrating the unequal legal landscape of Black America, even following Gunnar Myrdal’s landmark 1944 examination of the U.S. Charles Lawrence discusses backlash against affirmative action even as recruitment of Black students plummeted at prominent law schools, a topic of concern to Bell. Richard Delgado considers Bell’s research as a “toolkit” to address how each advance for racial justice “is cut back by narrow judicial interpretation, foot dragging, and delay.” Patricia Williams anticipates current discourse in a frank reflection on the echo of sexual abuse in persistent racial archetypes, denoting society’s refusal to acknowledge “the actual historical meaning of slavery as a system of human ownership.” Bell himself contributes “Racism as the Ultimate Deception,” in which he concludes, “the only defense against the racism phantasm as it operates in the real world is absolute honesty about our actions, our desires, our goals, or as close to that ever elusive dream as we can come.” Other prominent contributors include Lani Guinier, Paul Butler, Stephen Bright, and Michelle Alexander. Many powerfully acknowledge the persistence of structural racism and offer in-depth discussion regarding particular aspects of the law’s effect on marginalized communities, resonant in an era of White supremacy’s bid for mainstream acceptance.
An erudite collection to alarm conservatives and gratify progressives.Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-62097-620-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: The New Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
A fascinating magic trick of a memoir that illuminates a woman's search for meaning.
A Cowlitz woman’s collection of interconnected essays on memory, nostalgia, and introspection, conveyed through personal history, popular culture, and magic.
Washuta begins with an account of her history with magic and witchcraft growing up. "The truth is I'm not a witch, exactly: I'm a person with prayers, a person who believes in spirits and plays with fire,” she writes. The author’s story is also one of personal healing, as she writes candidly about her abuse of alcohol, being misdiagnosed as bipolar, and suffering from PTSD. Across 10 interwoven essays that move through Washuta’s life, she uses popular-culture references—e.g., Fleetwood Mac, Twin Peaks, and the video game “Oregon Trail II”—as guideposts in her own journey of understanding the world and her place in it. Washuta shifts her focus frequently (perhaps too much for some readers), from the history of the Seattle area to an in-depth discussion of horror movies to her search for an anti-drinking educational video she though she saw as a teen. At the same time, she investigates the connections among magic, witchcraft, and her Native heritage. The book breaks from traditional memoir in intriguing ways, including footnotes that speak directly to readers and an essay that begins by focusing on Twin Peaks and then slowly begins to emulate it, moving back and forth through time and showing the changing nature of narrative across shifting time frames. Throughout, Washuta is consistently honest about her own past and opinions, and she is unafraid to directly question readers, demanding engagement with the text. “This book is a narrative,” she writes. “It has an arc. But the tension is not in what happened when I lived it; it’s in what happened when I wrote it. Like I already told you, this is not just a recounted story; I am trying to make something happen and record the process and results.”
A fascinating magic trick of a memoir that illuminates a woman's search for meaning.Pub Date: April 27, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-951142-39-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Tin House
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
A harrowing, haunting reflection on the routine slaughter wrought by guns.
The acclaimed novelist lays out how America became a nation terrorized by personal weaponry.
In this brief but remarkably moving work, Auster blends personal and historical commentary, anecdotal and statistical evidence, sober analysis, and passionate appeals for reform, sketching the origins and present reality of American gun violence. Early in the book, he reveals a disturbing secret: When his father was 6 years old, his grandmother deliberately shot and killed his grandfather in an act attributed to temporary insanity. Auster suggests that this tragedy and its ramifying trauma might be viewed as broadly and uncannily representative of modern American life, where such violence has been normalized by its frequency. The author remains both sensible and compelling in his commentary as he notes the divisiveness of efforts at gun control, and he skillfully summarizes the reasoning and emotional commitments of both pro- and anti-gun activists. His outline of the nation’s historical relationship with guns is astute and memorable, and he persuasively assesses the sociopolitical roots of the “right to bear arms,” the ideological impacts of long-term conflicts with Native Americans and the enslavement of African Americans, and the strange oscillations of outrage and complacency that define contemporary responses to mass shootings. Though Auster’s arguments will be familiar to anyone who has followed gun control debates closely, the author’s overview is exceptional in its clarity and arresting in its sense of urgency. The book includes a series of photographs by Ostrander, each of them absent of human figures or any overt suggestion of traumatic events—caption: “Safeway supermarket parking lot. Tucson, Arizona. January 8, 2011. 6 people killed; 15 injured (13 by gunfire).” The photos document the sites of mass shootings and provoke, like the text, disquieting confrontations with the nation’s transformation of all private and public settings into potential sites of violence.
A harrowing, haunting reflection on the routine slaughter wrought by guns.Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2023
ISBN: 9780802160454
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: Nov. 6, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2022
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