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kyrisof66's review against another edition
Not what I was looking for. I think I'll do better with some of her actual written work.
tangelina's review against another edition
5.0
5/5 - Angela Davis is an icon. This book was a collection of essays, interviews, and speeches about the parallels of the Ferguson protests and Palestine struggles. Unfortunately, these collections are from 2013-2015. Angela was trying her best to bring attention to what was transpiring in Palestine. It’s actually sad that it has gone on deaf ears given was it currently happening in 2024. I’m curious as to what she thinks about what is going on now.
quenchgum's review against another edition
4.0
Great for an audience of people that are already on your team, but probably pretty catastrophic if read by somebody that's not already with the basic program.
Angela Davis is, of course, inspiring. She makes thoughtful connections. She speaks powerfully in ways that make you reconsider how you view activism. There's a lot of strong, non-obvious stuff here to sink your teeth into.*
Angela Davis is also, of course, pretty extreme. In particular, she speaks a lot about prison abolition (not reform, but abolition), and she doesn't take the time to work through what the world would look like with no carceral punishment. In reality, like with a lot of these things, there's a lot of truth to what she's saying, and also a lot of truth to the pushback against her positions. (And, by the way, that's not to say that I don't think she shouldn't come out ahead, because I think she should. It's just that it is probably helpful to address the arguments on the other side.) But she doesn't address any of that pushback. She's not in the business of holding your hand. She's in the business of throwing flaming balls of fire to push things forward, because sometimes that's what necessary to get change to happen. Personally, I get more value and enjoyment from reading things that thread the needle**, where they want to push a viewpoint on you but they're willing to do the work to convince you and show you the statistics and thought leaders on all sides and help you place things into what they think is the appropriate context. I like reading pieces of work that acknowledge their own limitations. If they don't, I worry about the intensity of the author's perspective (which, honestly, is more often the problem than their actual underlying beliefs). Everyone agrees that the prison-industrial complex sucks. It doesn't seem to me to add much to the conversation to say that we need to abolish it. And I can see it alienating people that otherwise might have been willing to work toward a common consensus.
I respect flaming balls of fire, but they do have their limitations.
Also, because this is basically just a series of speeches and essays and interviews, it gets very repetitive. Same (extremely overly simplistic) stuff about Palestine. Same stuff about Assata Shakur and Davis being wrongfully placed on the FBI's Top 10 Most Wanted list. Same stuff about cops getting military training from Israel and looking like Robocop. Again and again.
3.5 ROUNDED UP BECAUSE I CAN'T BEAR TO ROUND ANGELA DOWN.
--------------------------////
*Some thoughts I enjoyed from this book:
"The call for public conversations on race and racism is also a call to develop a vocabulary that permits us to have insightful conversations. If we attempt to use historically obsolete vocabularies, our consciousness of racism will remain shallow and we can be easily urged to assume that, for example, changes in the law spontaneously produce effective changes in the social world."
"I tell you that in the United States we are at such a disadvantage because we do not know how to talk about the genocide inflicted on indigenous people. We do not know how to talk about slavery. Otherwise it would not have been assumed that simply because the election of one Black man to the presidency we would leap forward into a postracial era. We do not acknowledge that we live on colonized land."
"Everyone is familiar with the slogan 'The personal is political' -- not only that what we experience on a personal level has profound political implications, but that our interior lives, our emotional lives are very much informed by ideology. We ourselves often do the work of the state in and through our interior lives. What we often assume belongs most intimately to ourselves and to our emotional life has been produced elsewhere and has been recruited to do the work of racism and repression."
"Perhaps most important of all, and this is so central to the development of feminist abolitionist theories and practices: we have to learn how to think and act and struggle against that which is ideologically constituted as 'normal.'"
--------------------------////
** Some absolutely fantastic books that I think "thread the needle" (i.e., have a strong point of view on a topic, but educate the reader of the rationale behind their perspective, and acknowledge the limitations of their perspective):
-On voting rights: [b:Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America|22929518|Give Us the Ballot The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America|Ari Berman|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1413161783l/22929518._SY75_.jpg|42499067]
-On campaign finance: [b:Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right|27833494|Dark Money The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right|Jane Mayer|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1452601408l/27833494._SY75_.jpg|47815497]
-On the criminal justice system: [b:The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness|6792458|The New Jim Crow Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness|Michelle Alexander|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328751532l/6792458._SX50_.jpg|6996712]
-Somewhat "pro-Israel" POV (with heavy critiques on current treatment of Palestinians): [b:The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World|788875|The Iron Wall Israel and the Arab World|Avi Shlaim|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347480557l/788875._SY75_.jpg|774864]
-Very "pro-Palestine" POV but reasonable and very well argued: [b:The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler-Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917-2017|41812831|The Hundred Years' War on Palestine A History of Settler-Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917-2017|Rashid Khalidi|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1556345491l/41812831._SY75_.jpg|65247140]
Angela Davis is, of course, inspiring. She makes thoughtful connections. She speaks powerfully in ways that make you reconsider how you view activism. There's a lot of strong, non-obvious stuff here to sink your teeth into.*
Angela Davis is also, of course, pretty extreme. In particular, she speaks a lot about prison abolition (not reform, but abolition), and she doesn't take the time to work through what the world would look like with no carceral punishment. In reality, like with a lot of these things, there's a lot of truth to what she's saying, and also a lot of truth to the pushback against her positions. (And, by the way, that's not to say that I don't think she shouldn't come out ahead, because I think she should. It's just that it is probably helpful to address the arguments on the other side.) But she doesn't address any of that pushback. She's not in the business of holding your hand. She's in the business of throwing flaming balls of fire to push things forward, because sometimes that's what necessary to get change to happen. Personally, I get more value and enjoyment from reading things that thread the needle**, where they want to push a viewpoint on you but they're willing to do the work to convince you and show you the statistics and thought leaders on all sides and help you place things into what they think is the appropriate context. I like reading pieces of work that acknowledge their own limitations. If they don't, I worry about the intensity of the author's perspective (which, honestly, is more often the problem than their actual underlying beliefs). Everyone agrees that the prison-industrial complex sucks. It doesn't seem to me to add much to the conversation to say that we need to abolish it. And I can see it alienating people that otherwise might have been willing to work toward a common consensus.
I respect flaming balls of fire, but they do have their limitations.
Also, because this is basically just a series of speeches and essays and interviews, it gets very repetitive. Same (extremely overly simplistic) stuff about Palestine. Same stuff about Assata Shakur and Davis being wrongfully placed on the FBI's Top 10 Most Wanted list. Same stuff about cops getting military training from Israel and looking like Robocop. Again and again.
3.5 ROUNDED UP BECAUSE I CAN'T BEAR TO ROUND ANGELA DOWN.
--------------------------////
*Some thoughts I enjoyed from this book:
"The call for public conversations on race and racism is also a call to develop a vocabulary that permits us to have insightful conversations. If we attempt to use historically obsolete vocabularies, our consciousness of racism will remain shallow and we can be easily urged to assume that, for example, changes in the law spontaneously produce effective changes in the social world."
"I tell you that in the United States we are at such a disadvantage because we do not know how to talk about the genocide inflicted on indigenous people. We do not know how to talk about slavery. Otherwise it would not have been assumed that simply because the election of one Black man to the presidency we would leap forward into a postracial era. We do not acknowledge that we live on colonized land."
"Everyone is familiar with the slogan 'The personal is political' -- not only that what we experience on a personal level has profound political implications, but that our interior lives, our emotional lives are very much informed by ideology. We ourselves often do the work of the state in and through our interior lives. What we often assume belongs most intimately to ourselves and to our emotional life has been produced elsewhere and has been recruited to do the work of racism and repression."
"Perhaps most important of all, and this is so central to the development of feminist abolitionist theories and practices: we have to learn how to think and act and struggle against that which is ideologically constituted as 'normal.'"
--------------------------////
** Some absolutely fantastic books that I think "thread the needle" (i.e., have a strong point of view on a topic, but educate the reader of the rationale behind their perspective, and acknowledge the limitations of their perspective):
-On voting rights: [b:Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America|22929518|Give Us the Ballot The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America|Ari Berman|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1413161783l/22929518._SY75_.jpg|42499067]
-On campaign finance: [b:Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right|27833494|Dark Money The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right|Jane Mayer|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1452601408l/27833494._SY75_.jpg|47815497]
-On the criminal justice system: [b:The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness|6792458|The New Jim Crow Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness|Michelle Alexander|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328751532l/6792458._SX50_.jpg|6996712]
-Somewhat "pro-Israel" POV (with heavy critiques on current treatment of Palestinians): [b:The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World|788875|The Iron Wall Israel and the Arab World|Avi Shlaim|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347480557l/788875._SY75_.jpg|774864]
-Very "pro-Palestine" POV but reasonable and very well argued: [b:The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler-Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917-2017|41812831|The Hundred Years' War on Palestine A History of Settler-Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917-2017|Rashid Khalidi|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1556345491l/41812831._SY75_.jpg|65247140]
megaronislibrary's review against another edition
hopeful
informative
reflective
slow-paced