An astute, lucid examination of an incendiary issue.
A poet responds to troubling questions about authorship and identity.
Rekdal, a literature professor, Guggenheim fellow, award-winning poet laureate of Utah, and “mixed-race person,” responds to the concerns of an imagined student in six cogent, thoughtful letters about the vexed problem of cultural appropriation. “When we write in the voice of people unlike ourselves,” she asks, “what do we risk besides the possibility of getting certain facts, histories, and perspectives wrong?” Rekdal makes the useful distinction between adaptation—refashioning facets of a work—and appropriation, writing about or through the lives of others who do not share the author’s group identity. Such works, critics object, “traffic in stereotypes that link bodily and cultural difference with innate physical and mental characteristics.” Yet, writes the author, “to insist that a writer must be from the same group identity as the voice of the author has a dangerous flip side to it: while it warns off writers from blithely taking on subject matters outside their own experience, it also implicitly warns writers within the same group identity that an authentic experience of that identity does exist—to the group at least—and can and may be policed from within.” Besides citing many recent theorists—e.g., Toni Morrison, Ibram X. Kendi, and Claudia Rankine—Rekdal analyzes poems, fiction, and art, mostly 20th and 21st century, including William Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner and Jeanine Cummins’ American Dirt. She discusses publishing policy that promotes “marketplace colonialism” and the connection of appropriation to “cultural privilege, profit, and self-aggrandizement.” Rekdal’s sophisticated analysis reveals a generous respect for the creative process: “I don’t believe that an artist writing outside her subject position can only write into racist stereotypes,” she asserts. Authors should not be required to produce “socially approved depictions of race”; appropriation, she adds, may help us “to critique the very systems that fail to represent us.”
An astute, lucid examination of an incendiary issue.Pub Date: Feb. 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-324-00358-8
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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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