Reviews tagging 'Slavery'

The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story by New York Times Company, Nikole Hannah-Jones

37 reviews

beccaruthe's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Police brutality, Sexual assault, Death, Hate crime, Colonisation, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Racial slurs, Slavery, Torture, Violence, and Sexual violence

Minor: Abortion and Cultural appropriation

bandysbooks's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense fast-paced

5.0

The history of America told from the perspective of Black historians. While the history itself wasn’t entirely new to me, the perspectives provided really challenged me to think about some of the misconceptions I held regarding the history of this nation. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Gun violence, Hate crime, Colonisation, War, Grief, Sexual assault, Confinement, Death, Genocide, Trafficking, Injury/Injury detail, Abandonment, Emotional abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, Murder, Physical abuse, Police brutality, Forced institutionalization, Torture, Racial slurs, Classism, Medical trauma, Racism, Rape, Sexual violence, Slavery, and Violence

skitch41's review against another edition

challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad fast-paced

5.0

One of my favorite scenes in my favorite Indiana Jones movie, The Last Crusade, is the moment when Henry Jones, Sr., played by the legendary screen actor Sean Connery, is being slapped around by the Nazi colonel demanding to know where Jones’s Holy Grail Diary is. But when the colonel asks, “What does the diary tell you that it doesn’t tell us?”, Jones grabs the colonel’s hand before he can slap him again and says, “It tells me that goose-stepping morons life yourself should try reading books instead of burning them!” I bring that scene up in the context of this book review because, as of this writing, scores of “parent groups” across the United States are trying to force public schools and libraries to remove books about BIPOC and/or LGBTQ+ topics from their shelves. This particular book has been at the center of many of these efforts ever since the first articles of this project were published in The New York Times Magazine in August 2019. Having just finished this book, I have to say that it is one of the best books about American history that I have read in a long time. The authors and editors of this book make the best case for why Black Americans’s 400+ year freedom struggle should be at the center of how we tell the story of America, and, to paraphrase Henry Jones, Sr., people must read this book instead of trying to ban it.

For my full review, check out my blog here.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Slavery and Racism

Moderate: Racial slurs and Violence

Minor: Sexual violence and Sexual assault

deadeye's review against another edition

challenging informative reflective slow-paced

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Cultural appropriation, War, Torture, Slavery, Sexual violence, Sexual assault, Sexism, Rape, Racism, Racial slurs, Police brutality, Physical abuse, Murder, Misogyny, Mental illness, Medical trauma, Kidnapping, Hate crime, Gun violence, Genocide, Emotional abuse, Death, Colonisation, Classism, Confinement, Chronic illness, Child death, Child abuse, and Cancer

smblanc1793's review against another edition

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.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Death, Xenophobia, Racism, and Slavery

mmccombs's review against another edition

challenging informative reflective sad medium-paced

3.5

This was kind of a mixed bag for me, but I think on the whole this is a very strong introductory piece to relearning and questioning the mythology that surrounds the US’s founding and history. I enjoyed the way it was organized and how approachable it is, I was spooked looking at the size of it thinking it’d read like a textbook. But the writing was clear and the connecting links between all of its chapters were strong. 
However, I often felt like chapters were missing things and that some were just weaker than others. I also noticed some glaring absences especially when thinking about these issues through an intersectional lens. There’s a lot of focus on Black men, less focus on women, and basically no acknowledgement of LGBTQ+ folks, disabled people, Afro-Indigenous people, and many other intersections, which I felt weakened some of this work’s thesis. Personally, I also kept waiting for the book to make that extra push towards critically addressing capitalism, class, and abolition, but that might just be beyond the scope of this project (I also think that by framing slavery as the foundation of the US, rather than capitalism, would produce this [fairly simplistic] work. I think that’s the point, but I would have loved to have seen these authors make a much clearer link between the two. Cause without one I don’t think you’d have the other in the US). I think I’d recommend this as an intro to understanding the current impacts of slavery on the US, but I do think there are other books/authors who approach this general theme with a more critical, nuanced, and deep angle.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racial slurs, Racism, Slavery, and Violence

Moderate: Medical trauma

emily_koopmann's review against another edition

informative

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Slavery, and Violence