An optimistic and often enthralling book of advocacy for environmental justice.
A treatise on the current environmental crisis by committed attorney.
This timely, expanded second edition of van Rossum’s 2017 brief for environmental reform contains extra chapters and forewords by actor and activist Mark Ruffalo and Kerri Evelyn Harris, former candidate for the U.S. Senate from Delaware. In it, van Rossum takes a strong personal and professional stand against corporations’ profiting from exploitation of natural resources. From the start, she draws on numerous anecdotes to make her points, such as a visit she made to her late mother’s forested property in Central Pennsylvania, during which she heard that oil companies were buying up surrounding property, and the story of one of the nation’s most polluted elementary schools, in Manchester, Texas. Van Rossum uses these accounts to advocate for protective “constitutional environmental rights”—or “Green Amendments”—in every state’s constitution. The author combines experts’ evaluations with historical context and personal tales from her decades of nonprofit work to paint a clear picture of where the nation stands. And the verdict of this research is critical: More people die annually from pollution than from war, she points out, citing a report from United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. National laws often accommodate corporations, she asserts, despite evidence of their contributions to the environmental crisis. Fracking, gas pipelines, and overdevelopment are all shown to bear deadly consequences. For van Rossum, however, there’s hope. While addressing counterarguments and economic fears, the author insists that “Democracy will reign, our natural environments will be protected, and our economies will grow and prosper.” In this convincing argument for environmental reform, she presents complex principles in lay terms, and a concluding chapter that will likely encourage many readers to take concrete action in favor of the Green Amendments; it not only provides specifics on how each state amends its constitution but also offers practical ways to get other people enthusiastic about the cause. The volume can sometimes be repetitive, but van Rossum expertly balances science, law, and an engaging narrative to convey an urgent need for reform.
An optimistic and often enthralling book of advocacy for environmental justice.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63331-064-3
Page Count: 365
Publisher: Disruption Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2022
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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