More theoretical than many works on political activism, but provocative in its suggested paths for unity against power.
The noted novelist, playwright, and activist writes of ways to forge social justice alliances in a time of torment.
“The opposite of oppression is not only freedom but also belonging,” writes Schulman, active in political protest since she was a child in the Vietnam era and even more so in the ACT UP and gay rights movements in the Reagan years. In a time of atomization and the consolidation of social controls in a few hands, belonging is not a given—but, she continues, “if people living in shared conditions can muster enough cooperation with one another, they often have the strength to better their lives.” One imagined community that has benefited from building solidarity is that of LBGTQ+ people, whose rights are again under assault; their movement for civil rights was initially built by “the people directly hurt by unbridled power,” but in time it found many external allies. A modern analog has been the cause of Palestine, with an initially small number of activists now augmented by millions of people who “literally take to the streets because they cannot stand by and passively watch the brutality” in the Gaza Strip. This movement has brought BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions), formerly “an obscure strategy, difficult to publicize, and considered ultra-left,” to the forefront. In this, writes Schulman, author of Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993, one difference between the BDS alliance and the ACT UP of yore is that the former is “conscious in calling for radical democracy,” whereas the latter had not arrived at that yet; in that regard, Schulman insists, the bottom line is that “when you have to win, when you are desperate for change and must be effective, radical democracy is the only path that works.”
More theoretical than many works on political activism, but provocative in its suggested paths for unity against power.Pub Date: April 22, 2025
ISBN: 9780593854259
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Thesis/Penguin
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
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
PERSPECTIVES
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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