A book that proceeds from a worthy concept but becomes padded and meandering in execution.
Mixing memoir with manifesto, a veteran comic argues that when comedians’ freedom of speech is threatened, the whole culture suffers.
It’s terrifying out there right now for stand-ups,” warns Gold at the beginning of this funny yet scattershot book. With a president threatened by humor—and who considers it an enemy along with the expression of free speech in general—the author proceeds to show how cancel culture, social media campaigns, trigger warnings, thin skins, and what she clearly sees as the downside of political correctness have made comedians fear for their careers if they say anything that happens to offend anyone. “The best comedy lives on the edge of what’s acceptable,” she writes. “Jokes are nourished by tension; laughter is a release. Sharing laughs with others creates a sort of nonthreatening intimacy that increases our identification with one another.” True enough, but Gold’s argument needs a tighter focus and a sharper edge. The author delivers more of a rambling sprawl than most comedians would attempt onstage, mixing reminiscences of what it was like to grow up tall, Jewish, and gay with lists of comics who have challenged convention, along with page after page of some of their bits. Many of those bits work better than Gold’s own writing here, which could have benefitted from a stronger edit. Her tributes to heroes such as Lenny Bruce (“the Jesus Christ of the First Amendment as it relates to comedy”) and Joan Rivers (“my idol…the funniest and most fearless of women”) give credit where it’s due, and her relating of the price paid by comedians who have run afoul of the culture police is correct in its suggestion of overreaction. However, she fails to offer more of a prescription than “Lighten up, people!” Eventually, her argument loses steam.
A book that proceeds from a worthy concept but becomes padded and meandering in execution.Pub Date: July 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-295375-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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