A concise, solid biography of “the first revolutionary abolitionist,” a diminutive man who was decades ahead of his time.
A biography of a nearly forgotten Quaker whose life still resonates.
In his youth, Benjamin Lay (1681-1759), born in Colchester, England, was an unschooled shepherd and glover. Though a hunchback and not much taller than 4 feet, he became a common sailor. The Caribbean island of Barbados, where he became a merchant, was a major center of the world slave trade. As Rediker (Atlantic History/Univ. of Pittsburgh; Outlaws of the Atlantic: Sailors, Pirates, and Motley Crews in the Age of Sail, 2014, etc.) notes, this was where Lay viewed firsthand the manifold evils of the traffic in human beings, leading to his career as a fervent and intractable abolitionist. With his wife, Sarah, who matched his mighty spirit, Lay moved to Pennsylvania to join the Society of Friends. There, he quickly made himself unwelcome through his fervent preaching against slavery, especially targeting fellow Friends who kept slaves. In a form of guerrilla theater, at one meeting, clad in a military tunic, he stabbed a concealed bladder with a sword, spattering nearby Quakers with blood-red juice. Lay was formally disowned by various groups as he persisted in his demands for piety, humility, and reverence for all life. Through it all, he practiced what he preached, living in a cave, making his own clothes, and growing his own food (he was a staunch vegetarian). Ascetic and religious and also an autodidact, Lay compiled a significant text, which was largely a commonplace book with lessons from the Old Testament and the book of Revelation as well as classical philosophy. Titled, clearly enough, All Slave-Keepers that Keep the Innocent in Bondage, Apostates, it was edited and published by his good friend Benjamin Franklin. Relying on Lay’s book and pamphlets, Quaker records, and contemporaneous accounts, Rediker provides a valuable addition to abolitionist historiography.
A concise, solid biography of “the first revolutionary abolitionist,” a diminutive man who was decades ahead of his time.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8070-3592-4
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2017
A dry exegesis of country music by the author of Electronic Hearth (1991). Tichi (English/Vanderbilt Univ.) is a novice fan of country music whose background is strongest in American literature and art. Proceeding thematically, she addresses common issues in American culture, including the tension between the individual and society, the lure of home versus the call of the road, and nature as both a nurturing and potentially dangerous force. Lacing together anecdotes, interviews, and analysis of songs, she comes to the conclusion that country music addresses many of the same topics as more ``serious'' art forms, making it ``emphatically [a] national music.'' While her discussions can be interesting, ultimately she offers little new to explain the popularity or quality of country music. The musicians she favors—Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell, Laurie Lewis, Nanci Griffith, and Barry and Holly Tashian—all come out of a folk-rock background (in the '70s, they would have been called singer/songwriters), so they naturally tend to take an intellectual, pseudoliterary approach to songwriting and performance. Tichi's musical knowledge is slim, leading to some factual errors, as when she ascribes ``Dueling Banjos'' to Earl Scruggs, though it was in fact recorded by Marshall Brickman and Eric Weissberg. And the comment that ``the ability to read music would be futile for bluegrass...the music simply moves too fast to be read off the page'' would come as a surprise to any classical violinist who's ever tackled Paganini. The book is accompanied by a CD that primarily focuses on new country acts; this material is readily available, and it would be surprising if a reader who was attracted to this book did not already own most of these recordings. A tip of the academic mortarboard towards the ten-gallon-hat crowd that will befuddle members of both groups. (122 b&w photos and 16-page color insert)
Pub Date: Sept. 16, 1994
ISBN: 0-8078-2134-9
Page Count: 350
Publisher: Univ. of North Carolina
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Tisdale (Stepping Westward, 1991, etc.) leads an enthusiastic amateur's tour through sex in America (with a few brief forays abroad). In an inviting expansion of her controversial 1992 Harper's magazine essay of the same title, Tisdale offers a trek through sexual inhibitions, expressions, assumptions, and questions (for instance, if everyone thinks about sex so much, why do so few feel comfortable discussing it?), arriving at an increasingly fashionable pro-sex feminism. Americans are so conflicted about sex, she says, because they're caught endlessly between obsession and avoidance. Tisdale, fighting avoidance, confronts the subject head on. She checks out sex clubs, sex toy stores, pornography shops, and erotic novels, citing everyone from Roland Barthes to Susie Bright. Ancient Greece, the story of Adam and Eve, Freud, Jesse Helms, and Basic Instinct convince her that we're a nation of guilty prudes, arrested adolescents who can't sate our lust for adult material. We're ``sex drenched and sex phobic.'' Tisdale indicates that the fear starts with men, but that women can help fix it. ``Women guiding the sexual drive of men changes them, gentles the institutions men have made to cope with their feelings toward women.'' One area she sees women reinventing is pornography. The chapter on this subject is by far the most controversial and at times tedious. Coming down hard on anti-porn feminists like Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin (even more than on the Religious Right), she argues for tolerance and maintains that the heterosexual nuclear family, reproductive legislation, and patriarchal society in general are likely to do more damage to women than any X-rated films. Finally, she reaches the unoriginal but hopeful point that sexual freedom contains the seeds of significant social change. ``The center will not hold...if radical sexuality works.'' Just about everything you always wanted to know about sex but were afraid to ask. Fluidly written, sexy, probing, personally revealing, and wise.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-385-46854-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994
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