A compelling, thoughtful dive into the pursuit of being bulletproof.
A reporter discusses the practical and symbolic utility of Kevlar vests in this book-length essay in the Object Lessons series.
In 2017, the New York Times assigned journalist and debut author Rosen to cover the campaign to drive the Islamic State group from the Iraqi city of Mosul. On the advice of the Times’ Baghdad bureau chief, the author invested in some body armor: “The next question I ask is silly and ridiculous: How will I know when to use the flak jacket and helmet? His answer amounts to, ‘you’ll know,’ as though it was a choice when someone wanted to be safe and when they were willing to risk the absence of the protective vest.” When his equipment arrived, it wasn’t the body-hugging, concealable vest that he was expecting, but rather a bulky, suffocating garment. A few days later, Rosen went to Iraq, where the notion of bullets hitting bodies was never far from his mind. For the author, a lifelong sufferer of anxiety, the idea of a bulletproof vest (or a “bullet resistant” one, as the salesman reminded him) suggested a potent metaphor for humanity’s relationship to violence, security, and mortality. His book mixes his own wartime accounts from Iraq and Syria with discussions of anxiety and the history of body armor; along the way, Rosen seeks to describe just what he was trying to banish when he put on his vest. The author’s prose alternates between being confessional and informative; an example of the latter is when he discusses types of armor used by previous civilizations: “The Aztecs soaked quilted cotton in a saltwater brine, which crystallized when dried. The garment stiffened enough that when layered it could protect warriors from blades and spears.” Over the course of this reliably tense book, Rosen does a wonderful job of emphasizing the destructive power of warfare by framing his thoughts around account of being a noncombatant in a war zone. Overall, it’s a quick read but one with great impact, as it asks its audience not only to think about protective vests, but also about the soft, vulnerable things that they’re meant to protect.
A compelling, thoughtful dive into the pursuit of being bulletproof.Pub Date: April 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5013-5302-4
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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