An ambitious political work that delivers some familiar arguments.
A writer offers a diagnosis of American decline combined with an urgent call for a return to the nation’s founding principles.
Debut author Roberts begins his study with a now-familiar analysis of America’s ailments: rising national and personal debt, skyrocketing prices, the receding prospects for comfortable retirement, endless wars, and, of course, the relentlessly rancorous partisanship. But the problem, he avers, is not the country at large but a dysfunctional political system that nearly guarantees legislative paralysis and incentivizes lawmakers to prioritize their own narrowly conceived interests and those of their financial backers over the collective interests of the nation. His central recommendation is a resuscitation of the original principles that produced American greatness, tested and proven by time: “It means that we hold core principles. It means that we agree on the foundation and are willing to build upward from there. It means that the country comes before party and ideology and profit. It means that Americans look around at each other and understand that though we are flawed, we are family.” Roberts presents a wide-ranging discussion of myriad issues—health care, foreign policy, electoral finance, energy independence—but, for the most part, delivers short treatments, with some of the topics only warranting brief paragraphs. His chief intention seems to be the painting of a very broad picture rather than the production of a rigorous, detailed analysis. But he manages to deftly blend a grim assessment of the nation’s present circumstances with a hopeful sense of the future it can achieve.
Despite their brevity, most of Roberts’ proposals, whether or not ultimately correct, are defensibly sensible; for example, he emphasizes the significance of term limits for elected officials. In consistently accessible prose, he dispenses counsel that ranges somewhere between intriguing and platitudinous. For example, he encourages American citizens to pay their taxes, exercise tolerance for others, and safeguard their health. Other suggestions are far more captivating and less shopworn: He advocates a “one-time kickstart” for citizens that essentially provides three months of sweeping financial relief, including a reprieve from paying rent and health care, day care, and utilities bills, among other fees. Occasionally, the author misses the mark, unwisely coupling a sweeping generalization with a deficit of intellectual argument: “Whatever the reasons, well-intentioned or self-applied, the hyphen keeps us apart, as it serves more and more to highlight differences. Getting rid of it is one step in bringing us together. Our soldiers defend all of us without distinction.” Among the many problems with this recommendation, which is declared rather than defended, is that he supplies no route to its accomplishment. But this is the central failing of the work as a whole—it reads more like a sermon than a meticulous investigation, heavy on solutions confidently stated and light on evidentiary substantiation. Even the repeated references to the country’s founders exhibits this defect—he inaccurately treats that generation as philosophically monolithic, and never precisely defines what their views amounted to.
An ambitious political work that delivers some familiar arguments.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9985590-4-9
Page Count: 104
Publisher: Sons of Joy, LLC
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
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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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