An informative and impassioned primer on America’s growing Ethiopian community.
A social scientist enmeshes herself in the Ethiopian refugee crisis on both sides of the Atlantic in this nonfiction work.
Working for a refugee organization in Australia, Pinpin-Feinstein developed a deep interest in learning about displaced people. When she returned to her home in Washington, D.C., she found that the nearby neighborhood of Silver Spring, Maryland, had transformed into a “Little Ethiopia” with a thriving network of bars, cafes, groceries, and restaurants comprising the world’s largest Ethiopian population outside of Ethiopia. Seeking to learn more about her new neighbors, the author returned to her academic roots (she has graduate degrees in the social sciences and has worked at times as a college instructor) to learn as much as she could about Ethiopian history, culture, and the experiences of refugees (“I was keen to find the connections between us, maybe even form friendships along the way”). Pinpin-Feinstein was born in the Philippines; the author’s personal familiarity with dictator Ferdinand Marcos helped her to draw connections between her own life and that of Ethiopians who have been unable to escape a string of authoritarian regimes across the past half-century. Pinpin-Feinstein’s observations are informed by the author’s experiences with two distinct groups of Ethiopians: those with whom she formed close personal friendships in the Washington, D.C., area and those whom she met while traveling to Ethiopia in 2017. Her rigorous analysis blends scholarly research on the history of the East African nation with interviews conducted with the Ethiopians themselves. Readers learn of the rich cultural legacy that unites many Ethiopians throughout the diaspora; the author also explores complex questions of identity among refugees as they grapple with America’s unique racial dynamics and increasingly anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies. While the text is informed by the scholarly literature on the topic, Pinpin-Feinstein’s intimate prose style is designed to acquaint lay readers with an often-misunderstood population. The work includes ancillary materials such as full-color maps and photographs, an Amharic pronunciation guide, suggested readings, a glossary, and a timeline of Ethiopian history.
An informative and impassioned primer on America’s growing Ethiopian community.Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9798891326378
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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
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