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Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019 by Ibram X. Kendi

6 reviews

talonsontypewriters's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

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sydapel's review against another edition

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challenging informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

I usually don't rate the anti-racist books I read, but holy shit was this the most impactful thing I've read this year, and I haven't seen it talked about nearly enough. It's so uniquely structured and powerfully written, and more than any other book I've read made me directly confront the white supremacy rooted in this country's history. It's long, but so worth your time. 
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mydearwatsonbooks's review against another edition

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just_one_more_paige's review

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challenging informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

 
Well, this is just one of those big-name recent releases that I knew I needed to read. And then I actually read an interview with Kendi and Blain and the audiobook producer (does anyone else that works/spends time in a library read Book Page?) where they talked about matching the full cast of narrators to easy essay/chapter and how important the voice/vibe/topic match was. Which happened around the same time that Libro.fm offered the audiobook as an ALC...and here we are! 
 
Well, the subtitle of this fairly epic collection, A Community History of African America 1619-2019, pretty well sums up the contents. This is a collection of close to one hundred essays and poems that tell the history of Africans in America, retelling the history of America within the frame of this perspective. With authors whose backgrounds range from historian to sociologist to lawyers to journalists to artists and more, this chronological look at four hundred years of African-American history (from first arrival through slavery, segregation, migration, general cultural and systemic oppression and violence, along with resistance, art and creativity, and myriad examples of the constant pushing of boundaries) is stunningly successfully ambitious in scope (which should come as no surprise, considering the curators).   
This is a really unique book to review because it was so...all-encompassing. I think it's going to be tough to speak to anything individually, since this was such a sweeping history, and each of the essays felt like it covered so much in such a short time. Reviewing it all seems like a nigh-on impossible task. That being said, I'll kind of give some broad sweeping thoughts/reactions, perhaps add a few more specific comments (for flavor!), and then just close out with a recommendation to read (or, really, listen - the full cast audiobook narration was a spectacular experience) to it yourself. 
 
Starting with a personal note, I have to say that, as a twice-graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill, starting this right after their recent self-inflicted BS bad rep post the non-tenure-granting to Nikole Hannah-Jones, was stark and poignant, since the opening essay (the arrival in 1619 of the first Africans to this land) was by her (and the "not" reason for her not-tenure was most definitely related to her involvement with th 1619 Project). As a good friend said, "truth hurts, UNC." 
 
Moving forwards from there, this was a beautiful compilation of Black voices telling the stories of their history centering them, which is a huge, and necessary, departure from the "conventional" history taught in schools (the authors of which textbooks are, pretty much all, white). It was such a cool way to look at such a large chunk of time too, getting snippets of individual stories that illuminated so many different periods and lives, working together to make a full historical picture. I also absolutely loved the way that so many nuances were added to that picture, with perspectives not commonly considered (like the concept of myriad separate African identities before African American became a "single" thing) and non-mainstream perspectives of common/popular figures and moments (like reflections from a descendant of Plessy from Plessy v Ferguson). Along these same lines, these moments did a really great job exemplifying how often historical figures, whether deserved/beneficial or not, get defined by the time period and not by their person. I also really enjoyed reading from contributors whose other work I know/have read, like Heather McGhee, Kiese Laymon, Angela Davis, Isabel Wilkerson and more, because it was fascinating to see what they felt was most important to highlight in such a short space, in comparison with their longer/other works. Overall, the creative breadth of narrative style was so well executed and curated. And though for some reason in my head this was more a creative nonfiction/fiction collection, rather than a strictly nonfiction/educational collection, in the end it was amazing and it didn't matter what I had expected, because what I got was spectacular. 
 
One benefit to going through these pieces of history so quickly, even though sometimes I definitely wanted more, was that there was a great opportunity to see patterns unfold. For example, watching the evolution of the purposeful dehumanization of Black people (and even more specifically, the differences in the way Black men and Black women were societally stereotyped and/or degendered) and how those socially-created parameters have been codified and accepted as truth today is hard, but so important, to witness. It's a comprehensive look at how we (white people, specially, white politically/economically powerful people) created, for the benefit, the racism that led to slavery and the society we have today. It did not start out that way and so clearly didn't/doesn't have to be that way. 
 
The chance to experience these years in such quick succession emphasized how, over and over, history's pattern of racial disenfranchisement in America has repeated itself. This is particularly striking in juxtaposition with realizing that we accept so many things as "fact" right now that were fabricated so recently as to be within my lifetime (or just before…). Really, this was just such an incredible reading and learning experience. 
 
“This omission is intentional: when we are creating a shared history, what we remember is just as revolutionary as what we forget.” 
 
“It was a womanhood synonymous with market productivity, not motherhood; and with promiscuity rather than modesty or a heightened moral sensibility.” 
 
 “A recovery of the earthly and spiritual equality of all people, both in theory and in practice, is the only way to redeem religion from racism.” 
 
“The 1688 Germantown petition is a model of, if nothing else, a quality that Black people need in white Americans – the uncompromising belief that what is wrong with racism is not that it inhibits full access to American goods and treasures but that it is an affront to the human standing of Black Americans. Black people don’t need allies. We need decent people possessed of the moral conviction that lives matter.” 
 
 “Time and again white racism produced Black resistance. It is one of the longest-running plotlines in African American history.” 
 
“While some nations vow never to forget, our American battle has always been over what we allow ourselves to remember. Our historical record, we know, is subjective. Not every account is written down. The distinction between equity and injustice, riot and uprising, hinges on whose hand holds the pen. So often, it seems, our history is hiding from us, preventing the possibility that we dare look back and tell the truth – afraid of what doing so may require of us now.” 
 
“But true equality cannot be left to the whims of the electorate – it is the predicate for democracy and the vote, not their product.” 
 
“What happens to the person when they become a symbol? Can they be recovered? Can they exist beyond what they embody? In this wrestling over symbols, the individual is sacrificed. They become the unknown.” 
 
“When it comes to our democracy, and who we determine to have the right to vote – our most sacred of rights – patience is no virtue. We must never be patient when someone else’s rights are in the balance. We cannot wait on laws, or elected officials, or anyone else. The only virtue when it comes to the right to vote is impatience.”  
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rorikae's review against another edition

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emotional informative reflective fast-paced

4.5

 ‘Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019’ edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain is a collection of essays that tell the four-hundred-year history of people of African descent in the United States. It is an affecting collection that tells this history through highlighting both larger narratives and individual lives.
I think this is a perfect piece of introductory literature and to chronicle the changes across these years of history. Since each essay is of similar length, taking up about 10 to 15 minutes in the audiobook version, there isn’t a ton of time to delve deep into each topic, but in that way I think it is the perfect jumping off point for learning more. I believe this would be a perfect piece of literature to be taught in a high school history class that then invites each student to pick the essay or time in history that they found the most compelling to do more research on. There are lots of names and points in history that I know I will be looking up more about spurred on by their inclusion in this collection.
I highly recommend the audiobook. Each essay gets its own narrator and that adds to the community feel of the anthology. This is essential reading and I highly, highly recommend it.
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sherbertwells's review

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adventurous challenging informative reflective medium-paced

3.0

“The hero of this drama is Black people. All Black People. The free Blacks; the uncloaked maroons; the Black elite; the preachers and reverends; the doormen and doctors; the sharecroppers and soldiers—they are all protagonists in our epic adventure.

Spoiler alert: the hero of this story does not die.

Ever” (235)

In the century to come, I wonder whether academics will attribute a specific style to the nonfiction of the early 21st century. Modern-day readers can recognize turn-of-the-century Communist propaganda at first glance. We know what an 18th-century pamphlet is supposed to sound like. But we don’t see the literature of our own time the same way; we recognize the stylistic choices of individuals, not generations. Is our current perspective unadulterated by the obfuscating lens of the historian? Or is it merely unrefined?

The solution to this question can only be found by carefully considering a quiver of contemporary writers, such are found in Four Hundred Souls, a recent anthology from historians Ibram X. Kendi (I’ve reviewed his Stamped from the Beginning here) and Keisha N. Blain. Subtitled A Community History of African America, 1619-2019, this collection displays the work of 92 Black academics, journalists and poets. Each author is given a five-year period in American history to cover, starting with the arrival of enslaved people in 1619 and ending with the Black Lives Matter movement. At the end of every 40 years is a poem commemorating the achievement and suffering of African-Americans during that period.

Most of the essays are less than five pages each, so the extraordinary one fly by. Some of my favorite essays are: “The Middle Passage” by Mary E. Hicks, which discusses the lives of West African mariners “on the margins of the infamous [slave] trade” (67), “The Selling of Joseph” by Brandon R. Byrd, “Maroons and Marronage” by Sylviane A. Diouf, “Phillis Wheatley” by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, “Cotton” by Kiese Laymon, a personal recollection, “Atlanta” by Tera W. Hunter, “John Wayne Niles” by William A. Darity, Jr., “The Hip-Hop Generation” by Bakari Kitwana and “Anita Hill” by Salamishah Tillet. My favorite poem was Patricia Smith’s “Coiled and Unleashed,” which reads like a violent and beautiful birth. Before I picked up Four Hundred Souls, Smith and many other brilliant authors in the collection were unfamiliar to me.

“When we are creating a shared history, what we remember is just as revelatory as what we forget” (4)

Luckily not every author is a stranger: Angela Davis is here, as are Isabelle Wilkerson and the poet Jericho Brown. I was especially excited to see Keeyanga Yamhatta-Taylor, who works in the same field as my mother, writing about property ownership and “urban renewal” in 1970s Chicago. The promotion of Black academics like her is a powerful tool against the erasure of Black history, and the sheer number of voices in this anthology creates a very useful source for examining the nuances of contemporary antiracist literature.

Four Hundred Souls is not a monolith, but once you start looking, it’s easy to find commonalities between its 80-odd essays. Some begin with a personal memory or an interview with the descendent of a famous individual. Others quote liberally from Donald Trump and make observations about the state of America between 2016 and 2020. Many essays juxtapose cool, academic detail (“Between 1715 and 1763...only 16 out of 636 British slavers ported in New York”) with earnest imagination (“The shame and humiliation that enslated people suffered remained plainly visible in their tears and in the silent screams of their eyes”) in order to reinforce the urgency of their message (88). This technique isn’t dishonest, exactly, but once you’ve seen it twenty times in the same book it feels more like a rhetorical gimmick than a profound statement of feeling.

Because I only ended up liking some of the essays in Four Hundred Souls, I can’t swear by the whole collection. But that fact only demonstrates how many different voices have contributed to it. Rather than a definitive history, the book should be treated as a reading list. If you encounter a topic that you want to learn more about, look up the author’s other works and start there. In my case, I found the depiction of Reconstruction-era urban life particularly interesting, and can’t wait to see where the next book takes me!

Four Hundred Souls is a two-way gate. It leads the modern reader into a grave and mysterious labyrinth, whose turns are marked with the names of heroes and martyrs. But twenty years from now it will swing the other way, revealing a hall of mirrors and the letters—distinct, hopefully, despite the years—of a country in perpetual crisis.

“Together, despite the odds, we have made it this far. The powerful essays and poetry in Four Hundred Souls are a testament to how much we have overcome, and how we have managed to do it together, despite our differences and diverse perspectives.

Yet. I am not convinced that we are our ancestors’ wildest dreams. At least not yet” (391)

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