A moving, defiant poetic exposé of world injustice.
Black feminist poet and educator Juanita rails against those who threaten the “inviolable right to live” in this collection.
“Some time after my youthful and equally fervent participation in the Black Panther Party, I became a Nichiren Soka Gakkai Buddhist,” remarks Juanita in her preface to this new collection. The poet goes on to explain how the second president of Soka Gakkai International, Josei Toda, denounced people who would employ nuclear weaponry as “ ‘devils’ in the Buddhist sense of ‘robbers of life.’ ” Throughout this book, Juanita calls out the “evils of imperialism,” including nuclear aggression, equating it with the destructive movie monster Godzilla. The opening work even draws on a plot summary of the original 1954 film: “American nuclear weapons testing has created a seemingly unstoppable, dinosaur-like beast”; in “return of godzilla,” the concept of the creature is used to draw attention to other monstrous aspects of humankind: “unfaltering racism / uglier than godzilla’s scales.” On another occasion, the poet takes aim at Hollywood “as out-of-date / an institution as slavery.” Other poems touch on figures from popular culture; one provocatively juxtaposes Dave Chappelle and Malcolm X, and in “lizzo fights godzilla,” the titular singer and flautist confronts “amerikkka the beautiful,” with the speaker declaring “we is 100% behind you baby girl / behind your superb black ass...let us worship lizzo / that’s right—bow down.” Toward the close of the collection, the poet includes “The Gun as Ultimate Performance Poem,” an 8-page work that addresses gun control in America.
Over the course of this compilation, Juanita writes gloriously unrestrained poetry that always packs a punch. For instance, a poem titled “old black woman” rapidly develops into an unsettling portrait of racial oppression: “her favorite show was lassie / said white people love their dogs so much / because it was bred in them / to treat blacks like beasts / of burden during slavery.” Meticulously placed line breaks further intensify this poem’s impact. Elsewhere, “swimming towards godzilla, swimming from godzilla” deftly pinpoints the horror, sadness, and futility of the refugee crisis: “in the great Mediterranean / their arms paddle to freedom / the women and babies scream and sink / into eternity / a few feet from the raft.” Such jarring imagery compels readers to face issues of social injustice head-on. Juanita’s poetry can also be wryly amusing, as in a poem that points out the absurdity of people being defined by their skin color: “ ‘I’m crazy about the new guy. What a pumpkin.’ / ‘Are you sure he’s not a yam? Or even a sweet potato?’ ” Throughout, her poems aim to shake readers up and make them rethink issues from new angles, as in the aforementioned “The Gun as Ultimate Performance Poem,” in which the speaker declares, “I don’t want gun control. I want police who are unarmed, peace officers.” Readers will find this to be incisive writing that aims to be a powerful tool for positive change.
A moving, defiant poetic exposé of world injustice.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2022
ISBN: 9781732609808
Page Count: 90
Publisher: EquiDistance Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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