Heavy Lifting

Stamped from the Beginning: the Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi

New York : Nation Books, 2017.  

xi, 582 p. ; 24 cm. 

 

Ibram X. Kendi's Stamped from the Beginning is a long read [more than 500 pages], a painful read, a hard read, and yet a necessary and worthwhile read. As a Kirkus review noted, one can dispute that this is the "definitive" history of racist ideas, but the book is an indispensable tool for coming to terms with the anti-Black racism in the US - and is a powerful tool in offering ways to wrestle with it.  

Kendi, positioning himself as an anti-racist, posits that the project of racism in the US advances not only through the efforts of segregationists (who consider Black people as inherently inferior to whites), but also with the help of assimiliationists who consider black people/culture as being pathological (due to racism) and yet capable of eventually achieving the "standards" of  the best of white culture and civilization. For Kendi, anti-racism is the force that can dismantle the damages of segreationism and assimilationism.  It is a powerful idea.

Kendi traces the history of racism and anti-racism in the US through five historic persons - Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, William Lloyd Garrison, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Angel Davis.  I found the section on Angela Davis to be the most satisfying in that I think it best illuminates the way that capitalism and racism are inextricably bound up.  Davis is also a great role model for the importance of intersectionality. 

This book took me almost a month to get through, so it might be a struggle for most YA readers.  But I'll definitely get the YA version written with Jason Reynolds for this library and look forward to reading through it.

 

 

Reconstruction Redux

Dark Sky Rising: Reconstruction and the Dawn of Jim Crow by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
New York : Scholastic Focus, [2019]
 225 p. : ill. ; 22 cm.

I'm pleased that Reconstruction is being written about more lately.  It strikes me that it is one of the most important periods in American history, a period where the promises of democracy and racial justice had a brief and shining moment and then were crushed under a wave of white supremacist violence and terror that still infects the body politic of the US.  Reconstruction helps one understand the latest rise of white nationalism that has essentially taken over the modern Republican Party.

Reconstruction offers hope and not just despair, though.  It shows that with vigorous federal power and protections for all citizens, there could be a society where power is shared by all people and not just a privileged few. It also shows how powerful the appeal of dignity and freedom is for people who have been deprived of it - and how that appeal can motivate them to strive for great achievements. 

This book has a some of the feel of the Indigenous People's History of the United States for Young People that I read this summer.  Gates wrote the book with upper middle and high school age students in mind.  That keeps it from being overly heavy and keeps the reader from getting lost in too much information.  It is a book I would recommend for both young adults and regular old adults - like me!

Bloody Chicago

A Few Drops of Red: The Chicago Race Riot of 1919 by Claire Hartfield

Boston : Clarion Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, [2018]

198 p. : ill., map ; 27 cm. 

Books like this make me glad (and proud) to be a young adult librarian.  This is great book of history in that it is accessible, compelling, and succinct without simplifying the complicated forces of labor, war, immigration, race and economics that led to murderous attacks on African Americans in Chicago in 1919.      

Hartfield's book takes the reader into the cauldron of race relations and economic warfare that was Chicago at the turn of the century.   The city was the slaughterhouse/meat packing center of the world, a major destination for European immigrants, and was rife with robber baron exploitation (for this book, especially Gustavus Swift).  The owners of the meat industry sought to crush any worker attempts at unionization and used any differences they could to divide workers - skilled vs. unskilled, Polish v. Irish, and of course - white vs. black.  When they needed strikebreakers, they brought in African American workers under guard - a move that further inflamed racial hatreds and tensions especially in the breaking of a strike in 1904.  

With the onset of WWI and labor shortages, the draw for southern African Americans led to mass migrations of African Americans to Chicago.  The jobs were there, but housing was strictly limited to the boundaries of "The Black Belt" and conditions became overcrowded and poorly maintained.  Then when WWI ended, returning white workers were given the industrial jobs and the blacks were fired.
It was a powder keg waiting to explode and the spark came on a hot, hot day in July 1919, at the lakefront when an African American teen was killed by a white man and nothing was done about it. The violence lasted days and only ended with the intervention of national guard troops.
This is definitely a book to recommend for history buffs, and especially local Illinois history buffs.

Forgotten No More

The Forgotten Fifth by Gary Nash
Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2006.
ix, 235 p. : ill. ; 19 cm.

I almost forgot to put up a review of this book that I read toward the end of the summer vacation, but it is a wonderful history book.  The subtitle of the the book explains what this history is about: African Americans in the Age of Revolution.      

The book grew out of a distinguished series of lectures given by Nash at Harvard University and fills in a lot of the missing history of African Americans and their fortunes and activities during the American Revolution.

The book really conveys how unfortunate the Revolution and its outcome was for so many African American slaves, and how the rise of even more vicious White Supremacy and racist hatred affected African American patriots of the Revolution.

I especially wanted to post a review of the book because of the current rising power of White Supremacy in the US.  I also wanted to be sure and mention that this book makes a great companion to the book - In the Shadow of Liberty.

I would definitely recommend this book.

Shining a Light on the Shadows

In the Shadow of Liberty: the Hidden History of Slavery, Four Presidents, and Five Black Lives by Kenneth C. Davis.
New York : Henry Holt and Co., 2016.
xvii, 286 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.

I was interested in this book as soon as I saw a review of it.  The Shadow of Liberty seemed like a great addition to the limited resources that we have on the period of the American Revolution and early history of the republic - and one that students might actually pick up and read.  As the book's subtitle indicates, it also might have a nice resonance with the contemporary Black Lives Matter movement. But what finally motivated me to read it this summer was seeing that one of our history teachers launched a Donors Choose page in order to get enough copies of the book for his class so he could use it as a central text.

This is a great young adult history book.  It's very interesting, has succinct chapters, and relates a history that is rarely told - the role of several of the first US presidents in keeping people enslaved.  It's also great in that it does not in anyway minimize the criminality and cruelty of enslaving people, but it also tries to wrestle with the complicated relationships that developed within that awful system.  Davis often just lets the actions of people speak for the conflicted loyalties, humanity and inhumanity that resulted from slavery.  He allows us to hear from former enslaved people when such texts exist, and lets us reach our own conclusions about why some enslaved people escaped when the opportunity arose and why some did not when the same circumstances existed.  He also tries hard to contextualize comments positive and negative that enslavers and the enslaved made.

I also really appreciate his introduction where he lays his own moral judgements on the table, and where he explains why he is so careful to use the word enslaved to describe those held in bondage instead of the word "slave." It is a powerful semantic tool, one which another writer on the history of slavery in the US also uses to great effect.

I'm glad that I read this book.  I'm pleased that it is going to be taught in our school.  I will definitely recommend it.

A Graphic Novel Becomes a Graphic Novel

Octavia Butler's Kindred: a Graphic Novel Adaptation by Damian Duffy and John Jennings
New York : Abrams Comicarts, 2017.
vi, 240 p. : chiefly col. ill. ; 25 cm.

Almost two years ago, I read Butler's novel Kindred for the first time, and as I noted then, I loved it.   Therefore, about a year ago, I was excited to learn that two comics artists [Damian Duffy who lives in Urbana and John Jennings who used to live here] were in the middle of creating a graphic novel version of Butler's classic.  

If you are unfamiliar with Butler's novel, its hero is a black woman in the 1970s who finds herself suddenly dragged back in time to the antebellum enslaved world of Maryland - where she becomes tangled up with slaves and enslavers that are family connections from the past.  It is a brutal and dangerous world which she quickly has to figure out as she bounces back and forth from present to past.

Duffy and Jennings faced great challenges converting the novel to a graphic novel format, but they really have outdone themselves - and the reception to their work has been extremely positive - landing them on the NYT bestseller list.  With shifting uses of color and skilled condensing of narrative, they have preserved the power of Butler's work, while opening it up to a new generation of readers and fans of graphic novels.

The publisher Abrams has a nice page web page for the novel - allowing you to see samples of the gorgeous artwork of Duffy and Jennings.

This is a work that I will definitely be recommending.

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
New York : New Press, 2010.
xi, 290 p. ; 24 cm.

This is a book I've been wanting to read since it first came out in 2010.  It received a lot of praise, and time has proven that the praise was not misplaced.

In the last couple of years - especially following the killings of Treyvon Martin and Michael Brown and the subsequent emergence of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement - the national debate on the injustices of law enforcement and the criminal justice system toward black people in the US has taken on a vibrant and expansive life.  Reading The New Jim Crow during the summer of 2016, I couldn't help but wonder how amazed Michelle Alexander must feel about events that have occurred in the ten years since she published the book.

Her book is a thorough, well researched, and toughly argued case against the US criminal justice system - especially the mass incarceration of African Americans since the ramping up of the War on Drugs.

What makes her book especially powerful - in addition to its research data and passion for justice - is that it shows how the new mass incarceration of black people is simply a continuation of the historic pattern of racism in the US adapting to new social changes and traditions in order to reestablish the oppression of African Americans: first slavery, then after the Civil War and reconstruction comes Jim Crow, and after the Civil Rights movement and legal gains, comes the War on Drugs and the lopsided application of it against people of color.

It's a powerful book and still very timely.  I'd recommend it to any student wanting to research or understand mass incarceration and institutional race

Harsh Life - Lush Art

Black Boy by Richard Wright
New York : HarperPerennial ModernClassics, 2006.
xiv, 419, 14 p. : ill. ; 21 cm.

One of the joys of being a librarian is walking the stacks and seeing a book that keeps calling out to you, "Read me." It must have been about 8 or 9 years ago that I finally read Wright's stunning 1940 novel, Native Son.  Since then his autobiography has been sitting on the shelf demanding to be read, and so I finally have done it.  It is amazing!

What I loved about Wright's book is the way it puts you completely in the mind and heart of a young African American male growing up in the Jim Crow south in the early twentieth century.  It's especially interesting in that Wright is never able to learn to hide his thoughts from white people - even when he tries, and he realizes that - in the racist South - could easily cost him his life.

It is also a wonderful book for anyone who is an artist or loves art, but really has no idea why.  There are times as a boy, where he writes just for the sheer delight of using language.  It is something that almost none of his peers understands or appreciates.  The book is also tribute to the stubborn grace of someone clinging to his integrity while being threatened by the larger society with its violent racism, and his more intimate social circle where his assertion of his right to think independently is ridiculed and punished by teachers, guardians, religious people, and family.

The book breaks down into two major sections - his life in the Jim Crow south (Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee) and his move to Chicago where he gets involved in the heavily Stalinist, intellectually repressive Communist Party.  Both sections are very interesting, but my guess is that many students would especially like the first half.

I would definitely recommend this book to students.  It is a fascinating, well written book.

Rough Cotton

The Half Has Never Been Told by Edward E. Baptist
New York : Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group, [2014]
xxvii, 498 p. : ill., maps ; 25 cm.

Read this book!  If you love history, read this book. If you want to see US history in a very new way, read this book.  If you want to have many of your assumptions about slavery and the Civil War turned on their heads, read this book.  The Half Has Never Been Told is long, complicated, riveting, and incredibly well written - read it!  For me this book brought to mind the books - Slavery by Another Name and Guns Germs and Steel - for it's power to tilt one's understanding of history and how power works.

I can't say enough about what an important and interesting book this is.  I'll be recommending it to any students who love history, and to any teachers interested in history.

Lastly, I'd be remiss not to note that I first heard of this book on a list of recommended books from Ta-Nehisi Coates who's book Between the World and Me is another book to recommend again and again!  

Civil Rights Sailors and the Big Explosion

The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights by Steve Sheinkin
New York : Roaring Brook Press, 2014.
1st ed.
200 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.

From the dynamic cover, to the epilogue - I loved this book.  It is an amazing story of unsung Civil Rights heroes who took against racism in the US Navy during WWII and helped force greater opportunities for African Americans in the military - and at great cost to themselves.

This book has all the elements of a great tale - a massive tragic explosion, tales of personal courage, rumors of a conspiracy, the suspense of a trial/court martial, and a positive but not rosy ending. And in telling the tale, Steve Sheinkin brings to life the stories of very young men who simply wanted to be given a fair opportunity to be part of the US war effort in WWII.

I really like this book for bringing together so many important threads - worker safety, segregation and racism during WWII (including extreme violence against enlisted African Americans in the south), the stirrings of the great Civil Rights movements of the 50s and 60s, the early career of Thurgood Marshall, and the ways in which change occurs in fits and starts through resistance and personal courage.  And it's all done in the relatively brief space of just over 160 pages (along with great photos and illustrations).

I would recommend this book to any student interested in WWII, disasters, the Civil Rights Movement, the military, and US history in general.