A delightfully sardonic and sharp, if fragmented, commentary on race in the Trump era.
A Black scholar offers ruminations on race, language, and Donald Trump.
As indicated by its provocative title, this book refuses to pull any punches about race. In an eclectic mix of philosophy, social theory, history, and memoir, Abydos covers topics that range from Trump to the court petitions of enslaved Black men and women. With an expertise in the intersection of race and philosophy that leans heavily on the rhizoanalysis of the post-structural French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, the author challenges readers through her “parodied” description of Trump as “our first nigger-president.” While explicitly acknowledging the epithet “must…be rejected and denounced,” she deploys it against a president whose ascension was built on White grievance politics. Abydos notes that while Whites are shielded from the racist term ever being used against them, which has provided them “a quixotic sense of hope and security…that they could never be as low as that,” Trump’s basest personal characteristics ironically match historical descriptions of the infamous term. As stated in the text, “Nigger is without principles.…Nigger is corrupt….Nigger is deplorable…,Nigger is unfit.” Throughout the book, the author also stylizes the word white with a strikethrough to show that “it is a social construct that functions as an identifier by a particular group.” Though at times the volume’s sometimes-incongruent themes make for a disjointed read, each chapter is remarkably consistent in its blend of scholarship and biting social commentary. Chapter topics include an analysis of how language itself upholds structural racism, a defense of former President Barack Obama, the history of a grotesque racist poem recycled for two decades by newspapers, and vignettes from the author’s life as a Black woman from Cleveland. The work’s references demonstrate a firm command of a diverse range of relevant, interdisciplinary scholarship and theory. While sometimes using jargon that may alienate a general audience, the author’s subversive and direct writing style will surely find readers far beyond academia. Admirably, Abydos is comfortable quoting a wide range of figures, including the rappers Cardi B and Rick Ross as well as the authors Frantz Fanon and James Baldwin.
A delightfully sardonic and sharp, if fragmented, commentary on race in the Trump era. (afterword, endnotes)Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-578-76888-5
Page Count: 214
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Maher calls out idiocy wherever he sees it, with a comedic delivery that veers between a stiletto and a sledgehammer.
The comedian argues that the arts of moderation and common sense must be reinvigorated.
Some people are born snarky, some become snarky, and some have snarkiness thrust upon them. Judging from this book, Maher—host of HBO’s Real Time program and author of The New New Rules and When You Ride Alone, You Ride With bin Laden—is all three. As a comedian, he has a great deal of leeway to make fun of people in politics, and he often delivers hilarious swipes with a deadpan face. The author describes himself as a traditional liberal, with a disdain for Republicans (especially the MAGA variety) and a belief in free speech and personal freedom. He claims that he has stayed much the same for more than 20 years, while the left, he argues, has marched toward intolerance. He sees an addiction to extremism on both sides of the aisle, which fosters the belief that anyone who disagrees with you must be an enemy to be destroyed. However, Maher has always displayed his own streaks of extremism, and his scorched-earth takedowns eventually become problematic. The author has something nasty to say about everyone, it seems, and the sarcastic tone starts after more than 300 pages. As has been the case throughout his career, Maher is best taken in small doses. The book is worth reading for the author’s often spot-on skewering of inept politicians and celebrities, but it might be advisable to occasionally dip into it rather than read the whole thing in one sitting. Some parts of the text are hilarious, but others are merely insulting. Maher is undeniably talented, but some restraint would have produced a better book.
Maher calls out idiocy wherever he sees it, with a comedic delivery that veers between a stiletto and a sledgehammer.Pub Date: May 21, 2024
ISBN: 9781668051351
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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