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tlaynejones's review
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Slavery, Medical trauma, Medical content, Murder, Religious bigotry, Xenophobia, Colonisation, Kidnapping, Classism, Police brutality, Rape, Genocide, Grief, Gun violence, Hate crime, Racism, Gaslighting, Deportation, Cultural appropriation, Death, Forced institutionalization, Sexual assault, Trafficking, Violence, Sexual violence, and Torture
andsoitgoes's review
5.0
This is an excellent history of America. It's content and frame of reference are unique in the historical literature and it expertly fills a long-timeline black history void that has been missing from the core reading cannon for upper high school / lower college. If you are a history teacher looking for a sub section, or someone who doesn't want to read all in one go, each chapter is self contained and covers a timeframe from 1619 to modern day. The chapters are by topic. I recommend Race, Sugar, Citizenship, and Justice if you are looking for topics not often covered elsewhere.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Classism, Colonisation, Xenophobia, Violence, Racism, Sexual violence, Physical abuse, Slavery, Police brutality, Sexual assault, and Rape
Moderate: Kidnapping
smblanc1793's review
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.5
This book is something of a mirror image to the history myself (and many like me, I imagine) were taught in school. And yet it is so piercing and unrestrained that it forces you to reevaluate which set of stories are the reflection and which the reality. It is certainly not a light read—not in any sense of the word. Packed full of all the history we’re trained from an early age to ignore, which gives it both physical and emotional weight.
The majority of this collection is made up of essays, sometimes written with a quasi-poetic lilt, but mainly stark and to-the-point as is the convention for this kind of writing. It does, at times, get repetitive, but only because history itself is repetitive. Because the events within repeat and repeat under new names, and those they affect never completely break that cycle of suffering. There is something powerful in that alone.
But it is the stories and poems within, I think, that save this book from feeling too much like a history textbook—not that there’s anything wrong with a straightforward history. But these pieces of creative work, often imagining and chronicling the feelings of those who experienced slavery and oppression firsthand, add the right touch of emotion, of connection back to the level of the individual that often gets lost in stories as vast as this one. The book as a whole is powerful and painful and important, and I am glad I read it.
The majority of this collection is made up of essays, sometimes written with a quasi-poetic lilt, but mainly stark and to-the-point as is the convention for this kind of writing. It does, at times, get repetitive, but only because history itself is repetitive. Because the events within repeat and repeat under new names, and those they affect never completely break that cycle of suffering. There is something powerful in that alone.
But it is the stories and poems within, I think, that save this book from feeling too much like a history textbook—not that there’s anything wrong with a straightforward history. But these pieces of creative work, often imagining and chronicling the feelings of those who experienced slavery and oppression firsthand, add the right touch of emotion, of connection back to the level of the individual that often gets lost in stories as vast as this one. The book as a whole is powerful and painful and important, and I am glad I read it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence, Death, Xenophobia, Racism, and Slavery
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