Reviews tagging 'Gun violence'

Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder in My Country by Patricia Evangelista

24 reviews

drraytay's review

4.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Police brutality, Addiction, Murder, Drug use, Gun violence, Violence, Drug abuse, and Death

sumsi's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense slow-paced

3.5

"Some People Need Killing" examines how a society fails to uphold its moral compass. It shows how populism and nationalism lead to a fascist society in which the weakest member of society become the targets of an ever-increasing hate campaign needed to justify the position of those in power. It's a powerful book, and a needed one, as it themes are globally relevant.

Evangelista manages to effortlessly weave in a flurry of topics, including autobiographical details, as well as historic struggles and insights into the contemporary culture of the Philippines. 

We learn about the conditions that lead to  Rodrigo Duterte's rise to power, the impact of his "war against drugs" and the aftermath of a country that reels against the violence it inflicted upon itself. We are presented with the people who voted for him, the people that executed his ideas, and the victims whose lives have been extinguished or otherwise irreversibly impacted for the worse. 

Trying to edit all of this trauma, personal and cultural, down into a report could not have been a harder task. As such I did find myself willfully rereading dense passages, doing extra research, and enduring the  —  at times  —  long-winded reflections and repetitions. It's a fantastic book that I highly recommend. Still I'll have to be honest in that it wasn't quite my cup of tea, and that trying to devour it mostly lead to stomach aches. It's a clunky book  — as in my experience are most that have something of substance to say!

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Physical abuse, Violence, Addiction, Colonisation, Kidnapping, Mental illness, Child death, Pandemic/Epidemic, Blood, Classism, Death, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Misogyny, Child abuse, Forced institutionalization, Gun violence, Racism, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Hate crime, Murder, Police brutality, and Sexism

lisztaffe's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative tense fast-paced

4.5

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Police brutality, Grief, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, Death, and Violence

Moderate: Blood, Child death, Confinement, Death, Addiction, Physical abuse, Hate crime, Classism, Death of parent, Drug use, and Gun violence

Minor: Torture

pomeranian_poltergeist's review against another edition

challenging dark informative sad tense medium-paced

4.0

I am giving this book 4 stars in respect for Patricia Evangelista's journalistic integrity and courage. I absolutely respect the incredible effort, dedication, and fearlessness it took to research and compile this book - and of course to publish it, which doubtlessly antagonized Duterte supporters in the Philippines and abroad.
And yet: this book could have benefited from a little extra editing. In its clunkiness I suspect pressure to publish on time, before political machinations change the tide of public opinion, but I wish it'd gone another round or two against a professional eye, if only to trim redundancy and instances of slightly clunky prose.  ("They were all x and y", as in, "she was all brown eyes and long legs", is one turn of phrase that showed up at least three or four times - petty, sure, but come on.) It could have taken this book from a fairly decent on-the-ground record of extreme extrajudicial violence to a timeless and necessary must-read expose.  

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Gun violence, Child death, and Death of parent