Another worthwhile examination of important issues affecting men and, by extension, everyone else, from an author known for...
A study of what Kimmel (Sociology and Gender Studies/Stony Brook Univ.; Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men, 2008, etc.) calls “aggrieved entitlement” and how it leads to the angry rhetoric and violence endemic to the United States today.
The author is no stranger to thinking and writing about men in their cultural climate; in his latest book, he turns his gaze to the pervasive anger specifically white men experience. White men, he claims, have held the upper hand for so long that equalizing the playing field results in explosive rage over their situation rather than the quieter despair, anxiety and frustration that other men feel. “Theirs is the anger of the entitled: we are entitled to those jobs, those positions of unchallenged dominance,” writes Kimmel. “And when we are told we are not going to get them, we get angry.” From there, the author moves through manifestations of this rage, such as domestic violence, mass murder and involvement in white-supremacy activities. Kimmel’s writing is open and engaging, reminiscent of a conversation with friends in a bar. This makes some of the disturbing content easier to digest and his arguments palatable even to those inclined to disagree with him. Though he admits his left-leaning bias, he writes, “I try to look into the hearts and minds of the American men with whom I most disagree politically….I do so not with contempt or pity, but with empathy and compassion.” For the most part, the author succeeds, but he does himself a disservice by alienating readers, with an overwhelmingly liberal introduction and first chapter, who might otherwise see merit in his conclusion that these “angry white men have some justified grievances—even though they often aim their arrows at the wrong targets.”
Another worthwhile examination of important issues affecting men and, by extension, everyone else, from an author known for his insight into the subject.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-56858-696-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Nation Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
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 moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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