Vivid testimony from an energetic activist.
A firsthand account of the struggle for social justice.
Historian Brown (b. 1948) makes her book debut with a candid memoir of a lifetime involved in civil rights activism. The author grew up in a Black, middle-class, politically engaged family in Charleston, South Carolina, where her father was a prominent member of the local branch of the NAACP. Brown rode at the back of buses, tried on shoes apart from white customers, and sat in a different waiting room in doctors’ offices. Twice when she was a child, the safety of her home was shaken when “Klan-type antagonists threw flaming crosses onto our front steps.” Not surprisingly, the state balked at desegregating public schools, which came to affect Brown directly when she became the first student to integrate her high school. There were bomb threats during her first days, and students refused to walk near her in the halls. Although some of the Jewish students were welcoming, most classmates—and some teachers—ignored or insulted her. “The responsibility of ‘representing the race’ was the most important that I had ever taken on,” she writes. But the psychological pressure was debilitating. Brown’s journey to find her identity outside of a familiar setting took her to Emerson College, where she discovered that racism transcended geography. She returned south to attend Spelman College, always seeking opportunities for direct action. After earning a doctorate in history, she embarked on a long teaching career. After leaving the confines of academia, she worked for the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, and she continues to support systemic change for marginalized people. “I have lost faith in appealing to conscience and morality as the galvanizing forces for overcoming bigotry,” Brown writes, “although I retain a fervid moral code by which I live.”
Vivid testimony from an energetic activist.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9781643364919
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Univ. of South Carolina
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
A football star’s bracing account of his battle for racial equality—and how powerful forces arrayed against him.
A principled athlete strives for social justice.
Kaepernick forthrightly details the activism that earned him global renown but cost him his NFL career. In 2016, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback “was filled with disgust” after police shootings of fellow Black men in several American cities. Before a preseason game, he made a spontaneous decision: “It hit me in that moment that I should find a seat” during the national anthem. He did the same at two more games before reporters noticed. Kaepernick will forever be associated with “taking a knee” during the anthem, but he credits Eric Reid—a teammate who agreed with Kaepernick’s message—for suggesting that they kneel together during subsequent anthems. The protest changed everything for Kaepernick. President Trump vilified him. Kaepernick and his wife received death threats. And though he’d taken the 49ers to a Super Bowl, no teams would sign him. He will likely make news for his take on Jay-Z, whose lucrative partnership with the NFL was criticized as an attempt to launder the league’s reputation. Visiting Africa, where Kaepernick learns about “African leaders who willingly sold their own people to the enslavers,” he “couldn’t help but to think about Jay-Z and the NFL.” In opening chapters, Kaepernick recalls suffering traumatic racial abuse as a child. Being in “white spaces”—he was adopted by white parents—placed him “under a microscope every minute of every day.” He isn’t always nuanced, depicting some people he disagrees with as cartoonishly clueless. But his writing about how college and pro teams “lied” to him about injuries underlines his “feeling of being a disposable commodity.” A decade has passed since Kaepernick played in the NFL, but he stays fit in case “a team needing a QB” calls.
A football star’s bracing account of his battle for racial equality—and how powerful forces arrayed against him.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781538777879
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Legacy Lit/Hachette
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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