Essential reading for our times, with the goal of true human equality.
“Not being racist is not enough.” The founder of @officialmillennialblack on Instagram delivers a simple guide for those “who wish to join the fight against racism.”
Early on, Williams, an experienced social justice activist, describes her process: “I began writing this book in the wake of the series of tragic murders that shocked the world in 2020 and galvanized many who had never considered their role in anti-racism to take action in their own lives.” In this “deliberately small book,” Williams aims to assist those who want to become more active by outlining how to be an effective anti-racist ally. The author lays out a series of focus areas for would-be allies, all of which are meant to “challenge the things we’ve been taught based on white supremacy, and to seek better and fairer ways moving forward.” Williams begins with definitions and first steps, including “Becoming an Anti-Racist Ally” or “What Does Racism Look Like Now?” She addresses common questions and concerns about terminology, misconceptions, and intersectionality. After the introductory concepts, the author moves on to proactive elements—e.g. how to be an ally in your social circle, workplace, and community. Throughout, she uses a conversational tone to explain the reasons behind each of her suggestions, such as examining the diversity of the communities you are a part of, and then suggests simple ways in which to talk with the leadership of those groups about the vitality of anti-racism. Williams is clear that the “allyship journey” is rarely easy or quick, which makes it that much more important to implement sturdy support structures, make space for messy feelings, and celebrate small victories. Williams also provides two helpful lists for further reading, one for adults (White Fragility, Between the World and Me, How To Be an Antiracist) and one for younger readers.
Essential reading for our times, with the goal of true human equality. (Includes Further Reading list and endnotes)Pub Date: Feb. 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-308135-2
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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
BOOK REVIEW
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