The answer is yes in an argument tinged with plenty of nuance.
A graphic-rich book whose title thesis is asked and answered in a cogent narrative.
Part of the publisher’s Big Idea series, this volume is billed as “a primer for the 21st century.” The idea is big but not, of course, new: Most drugs were largely legal in most parts of the world until relatively recently. As British freelance journalist Busby writes, for instance, opium was widely used in Britain until 1868, popular among the poor “because it was cheaper than gin or wine.” Prohibition and suppression paralleled the rise of the bureaucratic, command-economy state. For example, marijuana was legal in Madagascar until the authorities observed that a ganja-fueled populace wasn’t inclined to work efficiently in the fields. As Busby shows, there’s a racist element to the historic interdiction effort. “Many of the initial prohibitions were at least partly fueled by bigotry,” he writes, “underpinned by fears of foreigners and minority groups, and perceived threats to labor markets.” The war on drugs in the U.S., instituted by the Nixon administration, has been no different: Most consumers are White, but most police actions target non-White people. That war, Busby relates, has chalked up roughly $1 trillion in costs, with an annual expenditure today of about $50 billion. Meanwhile, cartels and their enablers—one of them the HSBC Bank, which “allowed at least $881 billion of Sinaloa cartel drug trafficking money to be laundered through its accounts”—cashed in big. Busby argues that prohibition is a lost cause, an opportunity for politicians to bloviate and gangsters to flourish, and that “it is time for a new, compassionate and pragmatic approach.” Backed by a careful graphic presentation in charts and photographs, that argument calls for legalization, regulation, treatment of the addicted, and other more humane and less costly measures that would have the effect of dismantling the illegal economy.
The answer is yes in an argument tinged with plenty of nuance.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-500-29568-7
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
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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