Important stories of the unseen and unspoken that illuminate a growing class in America.
A collection of essays and conversations about living in America without a safety net.
There is a growing class, especially in the U.S., not characterized by politics, race, or religion, but by economic uncertainty and lack of stability. Defined by the British economist Guy Standing as “the precariat,” this class cuts across broad swaths of the population: immigrants, prisoners, and gig workers, but also college graduates, homeowners, and artists. “We build community,” writes Caligiuri, “because we can’t expect, demand, or control the machinations of the captivity business.” Featuring contributions from Kiese Laymon, Valeria Luiselli, Steve Almond, Lacy M. Johnson, and other prominent writers, this book, edited by a collective of incarcerated writers in Minnesota, demonstrates what it means to live a life dominated by uncertainty. Among the subjects are a teacher struggling to free herself from a $386,000 debt from loans her gambling-addicted mother took out in her name without her knowledge; people living at a rest stop in Oregon; a gig worker delivering food to the Manhattan wealthy during the worst days of the Covid-19 pandemic; and a group of U.S. Forest Service scientists working to save trees in Oregon and California as climate change decimates forests and other natural habitats. Almost all of the essays are enlightening, speaking to the resilience with which these people address their despair. Trees share this determination, notes Lauren Markham. “The living will do whatever they need to survive,” she writes. “I had seen one desiccated former tree whose branches were covered in hundreds of cones….Sensing it will die, the tree bursts forth into cones in a frantic final act of hope: not so much for itself, but for its species.” A thoughtful conversation among the editors caps each moving essay, and the book features an introduction by Eula Biss.
Important stories of the unseen and unspoken that illuminate a growing class in America.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2023
ISBN: 9781566896955
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Coffee House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
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
A top-notch political memoir and serious exercise in practical politics for every reader.
In the first volume of his presidential memoir, Obama recounts the hard path to the White House.
In this long, often surprisingly candid narrative, Obama depicts a callow youth spent playing basketball and “getting loaded,” his early reading of difficult authors serving as a way to impress coed classmates. (“As a strategy for picking up girls, my pseudo-intellectualism proved mostly worthless,” he admits.) Yet seriousness did come to him in time and, with it, the conviction that America could live up to its stated aspirations. His early political role as an Illinois state senator, itself an unlikely victory, was not big enough to contain Obama’s early ambition, nor was his term as U.S. Senator. Only the presidency would do, a path he painstakingly carved out, vote by vote and speech by careful speech. As he writes, “By nature I’m a deliberate speaker, which, by the standards of presidential candidates, helped keep my gaffe quotient relatively low.” The author speaks freely about the many obstacles of the race—not just the question of race and racism itself, but also the rise, with “potent disruptor” Sarah Palin, of a know-nothingism that would manifest itself in an obdurate, ideologically driven Republican legislature. Not to mention the meddlings of Donald Trump, who turns up in this volume for his idiotic “birther” campaign while simultaneously fishing for a contract to build “a beautiful ballroom” on the White House lawn. A born moderate, Obama allows that he might not have been ideological enough in the face of Mitch McConnell, whose primary concern was then “clawing [his] way back to power.” Indeed, one of the most compelling aspects of the book, as smoothly written as his previous books, is Obama’s cleareyed scene-setting for how the political landscape would become so fractured—surely a topic he’ll expand on in the next volume.
A top-notch political memoir and serious exercise in practical politics for every reader.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6316-9
Page Count: 768
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
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