A well-written, engrossing examination of racial bias and proposed policy reforms.
A prolific author reflects on racism in America in this collection of essays.
Acclaimed essayist and storyteller Townsend has previously written extensively about his own experiences as a former member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and as a gay, White Southerner. But it was only in the past few years that he truly came to the “painfully slow realizations” about his own implicit racial biases. With this book, he hopes to provide White readers with a clear perspective as they grapple with painful truths about racism in America. The collection’s nearly 50 essays, many of which originally appeared in publications like LA Progressive, average no more than five pages and are ideally read as “daily reflections” rather than in a single sitting. The volume is organized into four sections. The first part, which is the most compelling, draws on Townsend’s experiences with “racism by proxy,” whereby White people deflect their own complicity in racist systems. This includes the author himself, who found that “protesting at a Black Lives Matter rally revealed more of my biases.” Essays in this section also include arguments against conservative objections to “critical race theory,” White privilege, and “revisionist” histories of America’s Founding Fathers. Subsequent sections address concrete policy solutions to racial inequity, reforms that religious institutions should implement to address their own sordid histories, and a sweeping vision for social justice that includes the homeless, sex workers, and the LGBTQ+ community, among others. Written in a conversational style that often uses stories and personal anecdotes to reveal larger truths, this immensely approachable book skillfully serves its intended audience of White readers grappling with complex questions regarding race, history, and identity. The author’s frequent references to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints may be too niche for readers unfamiliar with its idiosyncrasies, but Townsend generally strikes a perfect balance of humor, introspection, and reasoned arguments that will engage even skeptical readers. Perhaps more attention could have been paid to highlighting the scholarship and research of Black authors beyond appendix materials for “additional resources.” Still, overall, this is an effective primer on the persistent legacies of racism in America.
A well-written, engrossing examination of racial bias and proposed policy reforms.Pub Date: July 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64719-694-3
Page Count: 370
Publisher: Booklocker.com
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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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