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A MASSACRE IN MEMPHIS

Name: A MASSACRE IN MEMPHIS
Author: Stephen V. Ash
ISBN: 978-0-8090-6797-8

THE RACE RIOT THAT SHOOK THE NATION ONE YEAR AFTER THE CIVIL WAR

by Stephen V. Ash ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 15, 2013

Well-written, riveting and bound to attract many readers.

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Meticulous account of a long-overlooked racial clash during Reconstruction.

This is the first book on events of early May 1866, in Memphis, Tenn., in which 46 blacks were murdered during three days of “barbaric” rioting by lower-class whites. Drawing on a large archive of interviews conducted during federal investigations, Ash (History/Univ. of Tennessee; The Black Experience in the Civil War South, 2010, etc.) provides a wonderful overview of life in this “dusty, crowded, deeply divided city” in the early wake of the Civil War. Captured by federal forces in 1862 (a small military force remained), Memphis on the eve of the riots brimmed with tensions. The city was awash in war memorabilia, with photos of Robert E. Lee displayed in shop windows and talk of the Emancipation Proclamation as an abomination. Many whites resented the presence of black federal troops, as well as missionaries and the Yankees of the Freedmen’s Bureau, who worked to assist former slaves. The greatest antipathy existed between recently freed blacks (half the population) and Irish-American policemen and local officials. Triggered by clashes between black men and police officers, the rioting consisted of whites rampaging through black neighborhoods, assaulting residents, breaking into homes, and setting churches and schools on fire. Congressional investigators blamed the riot on “the intense hatred of the freed people by the city’s whites, especially the Irish—a hatred stoked by the Rebel newspapers.” Widely reported nationally, the massacre was seen as an omen of what might lie ahead for the postwar South and the country. Ash offers remarkable portraits of ordinary Memphians (grocers, firemen, soldiers, etc.) caught up in the tumult of their time.

Well-written, riveting and bound to attract many readers.

Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2013

ISBN: 978-0-8090-6797-8

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Hill and Wang/Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2013

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CODE TALKER

by Chester Nez with Judith Schiess Avila ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 6, 2011

A unique, inspiring story by a member of the Greatest Generation.

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A firsthand account of how the Navajo language was used to help defeat the Japanese in World War II.

At the age of 17, Nez (an English name assigned to him in kindergarten) volunteered for the Marines just months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Growing up in a traditional Navajo community, he became fluent in English, his second language, in government-run boarding schools. The author writes that he wanted to serve his country and explore “the possibilities and opportunities offered out there in the larger world.” Because he was bilingual, he was one of the original 29 “code talkers” selected to develop a secret, unbreakable code based on the Navajo language, which was to be used for battlefield military communications on the Pacific front. Because the Navajo language is tonal and unwritten, it is extremely difficult for a non-native speaker to learn. The code created an alphabet based on English words such as ant for “A,” which were then translated into its Navajo equivalent. On the battlefield, Navajo code talkers would use voice transmissions over the radio, spoken in Navajo to convey secret information. Nez writes movingly about the hard-fought battles waged by the Marines to recapture Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima and others, in which he and his fellow code talkers played a crucial role. He situates his wartime experiences in the context of his life before the war, growing up on a sheep farm, and after when he worked for the VA and raised a family in New Mexico. Although he had hoped to make his family proud of his wartime role, until 1968 the code was classified and he was sworn to silence. He sums up his life “as better than he could ever have expected,” and looks back with pride on the part he played in “a new, triumphant oral and written [Navajo] tradition,” his culture's contribution to victory.

A unique, inspiring story by a member of the Greatest Generation.

Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2011

ISBN: 978-0-425-24423-4

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Dutton Caliber

Review Posted Online: July 5, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2011

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WE SHOULD ALL BE FEMINISTS

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 3, 2015

A moving essay that should find its way into the hands of all students and teachers to provoke new conversation and...

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An enchanting plea by the award-winning Nigerian novelist to channel anger about gender inequality into positive change.

Employing personal experience in her examination of “the specific and particular problem of gender,” National Book Critics Circle winner Adichie (Americanah, 2013, etc.) gently and effectively brings the argument about whether feminism is still relevant to an accessible level for all readers. An edited version of a 2012 TEDxEuston talk she delivered, this brief essay moves from the personal to the general. The author discusses how she was treated as a second-class citizen back home in Nigeria (walking into a hotel and being taken for a sex worker; shut out of even family meetings, in which only the male members participate) and suggests new ways of socialization for both girls and boys (e.g., teaching both to cook). Adichie assumes most of her readers are like her “brilliant, progressive” friend Louis, who insists that women were discriminated against in the past but that “[e]verything is fine now for women.” Yet when actively confronted by an instance of gender bias—the parking attendant thanked Louis for the tip, although Adichie had been the one to give it—Louis had to recognize that men still don’t recognize a woman’s full equality in society. The example from her childhood at school in Nigeria is perhaps the most poignant, demonstrating how insidious and entrenched gender bias is and how damaging it is to the tender psyches of young people: The primary teacher enforced an arbitrary rule (“she assumed it was obvious”) that the class monitor had to be a boy, even though the then-9-year-old author had earned the privilege by winning the highest grade in the class. Adichie makes her arguments quietly but skillfully.

A moving essay that should find its way into the hands of all students and teachers to provoke new conversation and awareness.