by Samira Shackle ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 10, 2021
Moving tales of ordinary people navigating an unimaginable degree of violence and strife.
A journalist who has spent significant time in Karachi fashions a series of narrative portraits of the city’s beleaguered denizens, suffering “one of the worst outbreaks of violence” since the 1990s.
A coastal city bloated by migration since Partition in 1947, Karachi was the first capital of Pakistan, until 1967, and it remains the economic heart of the country. In these affecting portraits of five Karachiites trying to make a living in the dense, teeming metropolis, New Humanist editor Shackle—whose family emigrated from Pakistan to the U.K. in the 1970s before she was born—reveals the struggles of the countless disparate groups competing for physical space, jobs, and basic services like health care and sanitation as violent Mafia groups step in to fill the void left by a largely military government. Safdar, a young Pashtun who “emanates an electric energy,” is determined to become an ambulance driver after a childhood in which he helped take care of his polio-stricken brother. The job is one of the most dangerous in the city, taking him to retrieve corpses left by rival gangs. But he perseveres in order to help his fellow citizens, even thinking that he must eschew marriage because of the danger. Parveen, a young teacher in the “street schools” of Lyari, tries desperately to keep her vulnerable staff and pupils from joining the neighborhood gangs, at her own peril. Jannat, who lives in an isolated village just outside of the city, managed to complete school beyond the fifth grade, the first in the village to do so, but her prospects for personal advancement were thwarted by early marriage and children. In addition to the eye-opening personal stories, Shackle weaves in Pakistani history, including the rise of the Taliban and the dizzying array of political parties, riots, natural disasters, and sectarian violence that have plagued the city for more than a decade. The author also includes a timeline (1992-2018) and a list of relevant political groups.
Moving tales of ordinary people navigating an unimaginable degree of violence and strife.Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-61219-942-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Melville House
Review Posted Online: June 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
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by Alok Vaid-Menon ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 2, 2020
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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More In The Series
by Shavone Charles ; illustrated by Ashley Lukashevsky
by Leo Baker ; illustrated by Ashley Lukashevsky
by Judith Butler ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 19, 2024
A master class in how gender has been weaponized in support of conservative values and authoritarian regimes.
A deeply informed critique of the malicious initiatives currently using gender as a political tool to arouse fear and strengthen political and religious institutions.
In their latest book, following The Force of Nonviolence, Butler, the noted philosopher and gender studies scholar, documents and debunks the anti-gender ideology of the right, the core principle of which is that male and female are natural categories whose recognition is essential for the survival of the family, nations, and patriarchal order. Its proponents reject “sex” as a malleable category infused with prior political and cultural understandings. By turning gender into a “phantasmatic scene,” they enable those in positions of authority to deflect attention from such world-destroying forces as war, predatory capitalism, and climate change. Butler explores the ideology’s presence in the U.S., the U.K., Uganda, and Hungary, countries where legislation has limited the rights of trans and homosexual people and denied them their sexual identity. The author also delves into the ideology’s roots among Evangelicals and the Catholic Church and such political leaders as Donald Trump and Viktor Orbán. Butler is particularly bothered by trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs), who treat trans women as “male predators in disguise.” For the author, “the gap between the perceived or lived body and prevailing social norms can never be fully closed.” They imagine “a world where the many relations to being socially embodied that exist become more livable” and calls for alliances across differences and “a radical democracy informed by socialist values.” Butler compensates for the thinness of some of their recommendations with an astute dissection of the ideology’s core ideas and impressive grasp of its intellectual pretensions. This is a wonderfully thoughtful and impassioned book on a critically important centerpiece of contemporary authoritarianism and patriarchy.
A master class in how gender has been weaponized in support of conservative values and authoritarian regimes.Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780374608224
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
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