A passionate, illuminating account of the battle over “Britain’s last colony in Africa.”
Little-known story of an archipelago in the Indian Ocean that was evacuated and appropriated by British authorities in the 1970s.
As a British lawyer and longtime observer of international law, Sands, author of The Ratline and East West Street, became intensely interested in the case of the inhabitants of the Chagos archipelago—part of Mauritius and thereby inherited by Britain at the end of the Napoleonic wars—who longed to return to their homes after decades of being forcibly evacuated. Since Mauritius gained independence in 1968, jurisdiction of Chagos remained uncertain, and the international court at the Hague subsequently ruled that Britain had to allow the residents to return, a dictate it still ignores. Sands follows the personal travails of Liseby Elysé, from the island of Peros Banhos, who was rounded up by the British with her family and few belongings to leave the island in 1973. Secretly, the British were allowing the Americans to remake neighboring island Diego Garcia into a military base as part of the Department of Defense’s “Strategic Island Concept.” The author examines the incremental international push for decolonization since the end of World War I, specifically the work of Ralph Bunche and 1945’s Chapter XI of the U.N. Charter, the “Declaration Regarding Non-Self-Governing Territories,” as well as U.N. Resolution 1514, designed “to hold South Africa to account for its racial mistreatment of the inhabitants of South West Africa [now Namibia].” However, despite the independence of Mauritius, Diego Garcia served as a convenient military base from which to launch the Iraq War in 2003. In this poignant narrative, Sands describes his advocacy for Elysé and her family; they were able to visit Peros Banhos together even as the British have remained adamant, pending appeals. The book includes maps and photos.
A passionate, illuminating account of the battle over “Britain’s last colony in Africa.”Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9780593535097
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.
A thoughtful program for eradicating poverty from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted.
“America’s poverty is not for lack of resources,” writes Desmond. “We lack something else.” That something else is compassion, in part, but it’s also the lack of a social system that insists that everyone pull their weight—and that includes the corporations and wealthy individuals who, the IRS estimates, get away without paying upward of $1 trillion per year. Desmond, who grew up in modest circumstances and suffered poverty in young adulthood, points to the deleterious effects of being poor—among countless others, the precarity of health care and housing (with no meaningful controls on rent), lack of transportation, the constant threat of losing one’s job due to illness, and the need to care for dependent children. It does not help, Desmond adds, that so few working people are represented by unions or that Black Americans, even those who have followed the “three rules” (graduate from high school, get a full-time job, wait until marriage to have children), are far likelier to be poor than their White compatriots. Furthermore, so many full-time jobs are being recast as contracted, fire-at-will gigs, “not a break from the norm as much as an extension of it, a continuation of corporations finding new ways to limit their obligations to workers.” By Desmond’s reckoning, besides amending these conditions, it would not take a miracle to eliminate poverty: about $177 billion, which would help end hunger and homelessness and “make immense headway in driving down the many agonizing correlates of poverty, like violence, sickness, and despair.” These are matters requiring systemic reform, which will in turn require Americans to elect officials who will enact that reform. And all of us, the author urges, must become “poverty abolitionists…refusing to live as unwitting enemies of the poor.” Fortune 500 CEOs won’t like Desmond’s message for rewriting the social contract—which is precisely the point.
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 9780593239919
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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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