A valuable addition to the history of African American resistance.
An account of the young activists who banded together to form the Black Panther Party and push for change.
This detailed, thoroughly researched account covers the Black Panther Party’s origins until the final office closed in the early 1980s. The party had its beginnings in the contentious relationship between the police and Black people in Oakland, California. However, founders Huey Newton and Bobby Seale were also influenced by their families’ experiences with Jim Crow, the agitation of the civil rights era, and the developing Black Power movement. Nonviolence held no appeal, but the words of Malcolm X resonated, and the 1966 establishment of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense represented a new approach. As Eldridge Cleaver, Tarika Lewis, Elendar Barnes, and others joined, the party expanded its reach and mission, seeking to improve education, health, and criminal justice systems and speaking out against the Vietnam War. Law enforcement, including the FBI, viewed its members as threats and began to actively seek to undermine the party and destroy its leadership. Debut author Martin is joined by scholars Bloom and Martin Jr., who co-authored an award-winning history of the Panthers. Their insights into personalities and relationships give an intimate look, set against the background of U.S. history, at their struggles and determination to end the oppression of their people. Many photographs from the period enhance the text.
A valuable addition to the history of African American resistance. (Black Panther Party’s Ten-Point Program, authors’ note, timeline, glossary, photo credits, endnotes, index) (Nonfiction. 12-18)Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64614-093-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Levine Querido
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2021
Clearly written, with heart and integrity, but lacking in substance: tasty but not very filling.
Melian, a chef, activist, and former Test Kitchen Manager at Bon Appétit, begins this brief memoir by recounting clearing out the freezer and finding and eating one last helping of her mother’s signature fish dish following her death.
Sharing this precious meal with her brother connected them emotionally and physically with their mother one last time. In other vignettes, she ties her love of food to her happy childhood in Argentina; memories of cooking with her cousins at her abuela’s house and, in particular, her abuela’s ravioles de seso; the revelation of a sidewalk vendor’s hot pretzel that she ate following her arrival in New York City to explore a new path after studying journalism in Buenos Aires; and the physical and mental strength she developed after going into business to sell her empanadas. Melian briefly alludes to her work bringing free food education to inner-city public schools, but the stories she shares here are overall more personal and primal—food as sustenance, not as a vehicle for social justice—which feels like a missed opportunity. She also references in passing the difficulties of being a woman in a male-dominated industry where being Latina and speaking English with an accent affected how she was treated. Each of the individual anecdotes stands alone, without a narrative arc connecting them, but the descriptions of food are rich in sensory detail.
Clearly written, with heart and integrity, but lacking in substance: tasty but not very filling. (Memoir. 12-18)Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-22349-9
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021
A tribute to young people’s resistance in the face of oppression.
In 1983 South Korea, Kim was learning to navigate university and student political activism.
The daughter of modest restaurant owners, Kim was apolitical—she just wanted to make her parents proud and be worthy of her tuition expenses. Following an administrator’s advice to avoid trouble and pursue extracurriculars, she joined a folk dance team where she met a fellow student who invited her into a banned book club. Kim was fearful at first, but her thirst for knowledge soon won out. As she learned the truth of her country’s oppressive fascist political environment, Kim became closer to the other book club members while the authorities grew increasingly desperate to identify and punish student dissidents. The kinetic manhwa drawing style skillfully captures the personal and political history of this eye-opening memoir. The disturbing elements of political corruption and loss of human rights are lightened by moving depictions of sweet, funny moments between friends as well as deft political maneuvering by Kim herself when she was eventually questioned by authorities. The art and dialogue complement each other as they express the tension that Kim and her friends felt as they tried to balance school, family, and romance with surviving in a dangerous political environment. References to fake news and a divisive government make this particularly timely; the only thing missing is a list for further reading.
A tribute to young people’s resistance in the face of oppression. (Graphic memoir. 14-adult)Pub Date: May 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-945820-42-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Iron Circus Comics
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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