A “chronicle of oppression” that makes a rousing counter to the usual celebratory narratives of the American past.
A contrarian history of the U.S. dismissing notions of exceptionalism and triumphalism.
Sexton, author of the rousing political chronicle The People Are Going To Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore (2017), turns to the same problem that inspired his first book: the ascendancy of Donald Trump to the White House. “I could explain Trump’s victory politically, demographically, and socially,” he writes, “but historically, I was at a loss.” His explorations of the American past provide him milestones. The framing of the Declaration of Independence and, later, of the Constitution is an important one: Congress’ rejection of Thomas Jefferson’s language that considered enslaved people to enjoy the same inalienable rights as their owners did not sit well with representatives of the Southern Colonies, and the Federalist Papers helped introduce a system that traded an overthrown king for a new class of aristocrats. “Exiting the British Empire,” writes Sexton, “meant a new sovereignty, but it wouldn’t mean an entirely new society, as past hierarchies predicated on race and wealth remained firmly in place.” As the narrative progresses, the author delivers ample evidence to support that thesis: The Whiskey Rebellion was not about illegally distilling, per se, but rather about taxation and the power of the federal government (and that government alone) to issue money; Woodrow Wilson’s conception of a “league of nations” was built on “the Noble Lie of democracy” in conjunction with “the social control of a hidden aristocracy.” Today, that aristocracy is gladly served by the dispossessed middle class, betrayed by a leadership that is nominally both pious and racist, having been reduced for the sake of sheer numbers to forging alliances with the nationalists who would just as soon destroy democracy as guard it. And let’s not forget that “the Electoral College, engineered by the Founders to advantage slaveholding states against fears of majority rule in the eighteenth century, gave Trump the election.”
A “chronicle of oppression” that makes a rousing counter to the usual celebratory narratives of the American past.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4571-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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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