If you’re wondering why the presence of Andrew Jackson’s portrait in the Oval Office is offensive, this is your book.
Standing Rock Sioux writer Midge (The Woman Who Married a Bear: Poems, 2016, etc.) delivers powerful, often funny observations on life as a Native American woman in a contentious time.
As poet and novelist Geary Hobson observes in his foreword, Native people are too often thought of, at least by non-Natives, as humorless: “stolid, dour, ready to pounce on you (if you are white) and take away that unnecessary scalp.” Not so Midge, who loves a pun, a play on words, and a goofy recasting of pop-culture tropes: “Gag me with a coup stick” are the first words that appear in the book, followed shortly afterward by an exchange with her mother that includes the title’s play on another title, that of Dee Brown’s classic Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, and works in Chief Joseph with the witticism, “I will fight no more about putting the toothpaste cap on, forever.” The laughter isn’t frivolous, Midge suggests, but rather a way of thumbing a nose at death and the dominant culture. There’s a lot to fight, of course. One of her essays imagines that before trying on African American culture, the one-time headline grabber Rachel Dolezal was a “pretendian,” one of those pretend Indians whose numbers, she reckons, run to about 54% of the population. In another, the author considers other kinds of ethnic border crossings on a trip to Thailand, where she realized that, at least in that context, she was as American as any other American: “big trucks, big talk, big bombs, big money….” She does not, however support Donald Trump, who doesn’t fare well in these pages, and she chides her fellow citizens for being ignorant of “racism, sexism, and living and supporting an authoritarian regime." There are a few misses here and there, but mostly Midge hits, and hits hard.
If you’re wondering why the presence of Andrew Jackson’s portrait in the Oval Office is offensive, this is your book.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4962-1557-4
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Bison/Univ. of Nebraska
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
An engaging and informative cultural history, on and off the gridiron.
A rich history of the rise of the National Football League from its virtual obscurity at its genesis in the 1920s to its position as an economic and cultural powerhouse today.
Former Baltimore Sun sportswriter Eisenberg (The Streak: Lou Gehrig, Cal Ripken Jr., and Baseball's Most Historic Record, 2017, etc.) returns with the story of how five owners—George Halas, Bert Bell, George Preston Marshall, Art Rooney, and Tim Mara—refused to give up on the struggling league and lived to see (and cause) its current dominance. Thoroughly researched and gracefully told, the story begins with the background of each of the five, then moves chronologically through the early years of the league—struggles, controversies (among the most significant was the arrival of black players), adjustments (to radio and then TV)—to its full arrival in 1958, when 40 million people watched the Baltimore Colts defeat the New York Giants in the exciting championship game. As the author repeatedly points out, these five were fierce rivals, but they knew that to make the league survive and flourish, they could not destroy one another. So they compromised and changed rules to make the game more exciting; all would live to see the league’s vigorous health. (The final chapter deals with the deaths of each.) Although Eisenberg is admiring of the founders, he also recognizes—and highlights—their weaknesses. Marshall, for example, was a racist, the last to bring blacks onto his team, the Washington Redskins. Although the author provides some details about some key games (and iconic players like Red Grange, Marion Motley, and Sam Huff), the narrative is not a rehearsal of games but of the history of a game, a business, and five men who took a chance, lost money, and then found great success.
An engaging and informative cultural history, on and off the gridiron.Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-465-04870-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
An intimate memoir of the Negro Leagues by one of its greatest players. Though Riley (The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues, not reviewed) gets credit for helping Leonard write his autobiography, this book reads as if it were a verbatim transcription of Leonard's taped reminiscences. That is the book's weakness and its strength. It rambles and lacks consistent narrative structure, but it is also an important memoir of an era in American sports—and in American history—that has only begun to get the attention it deserves. The slick-fielding first baseman was one of the best hitters in the Negro Leagues from 1934 to 1950, and most observers believe that if it weren't for segregation he would have been a superstar in the major leagues. Leonard's memory is encyclopedic: He recalls plays and players from when he was a 13- year-old playing semi-pro ball in 1921 to his last game, at 47, in a Mexican league in 1955. He tells stories of grueling three-games- a-day schedules; of endless travel from one seedy segregated hotel to another; of lousy pay and breached contracts; and of winters spent in menial labor to make ends meet. Lou Gehrig, the white player to whom Leonard is most often compared, had a far more comfortable life, but Leonard expresses no rancor and only mild regret. Nor, at 87, does he romanticize the past. The Negro Leagues were not as good as the major leagues, he writes, and it is virtually impossible to measure black players of the era against their white counterparts. Leonard writes that Gehrig probably was a better player than he was. But he also wishes he'd had the chance to find out. An invaluable historical document and the record of a remarkable life.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-7867-0119-6
Page Count: 274
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1994
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