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Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019 by Ibram X. Kendi
17 reviews
apworden's review
challenging
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
fast-paced
5.0
This is an excellent overview of African American history. The variety helps break up challenging content and allows for better reflection. The audiobook is also fantastic.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Child abuse, Death, Domestic abuse, Genocide, Xenophobia, Violence, Torture, Slavery, Sexual violence, Racism, Racial slurs, Police brutality, Misogyny, Homophobia, and Hate crime
rorikae's review against another edition
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.
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.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Death, Genocide, Gore, Hate crime, Misogyny, Police brutality, Racism, Rape, Sexual assault, Slavery, and Violence
sherbertwells's review
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)
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism and Slavery
Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Hate crime, Misogyny, Murder, Physical abuse, Police brutality, Sexism, and Torture
Minor: Addiction, Medical content, Medical trauma, Rape, Sexual assault, and Sexual violence
serendipitysbooks's review
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
When I undertook my history degree it was drummed into me that good history was detached, impartial and objective. Four Hundred Souls is not that sort of history - and it is all the better for it. Stronger and far more engaging. And more truthful.
It’s a community history, a compilation of eighty essays, each by a different author. The authors came from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines; this is not a book authored solely by academic historians. Some essays focused on a person, some an event, some an object, others an idea. I loved the variety of topics, styles and voices. Each essay covered a five year period and they were arranged chronologically which gave the book a flow, a sense of historical progression and a cohesiveness. The essays were divided into ten sections, each of which ended with a poem that reflected on the preceding essays. I’ve never seen this done before but I thought it was very effective. The poetry brought a different dimension and I wished some visual arts had been able to be included also.
Another thing that really stood out is the way most, if not all, essays explicitly linked the events of the past with those of the present. This is not a book of dry facts from the past; this is history that clearly explains the present, and sadly indicates the way things have not changed as much as they ought.
It’s very hard to review such a diverse collection. Personally I especially enjoyed the essays that looked at the 1600 and 1700s since it’s a period of US history that I’m less familiar with. Michael Harriot’s essay on the Reconstruction era really stood out because of it’s honest language, language that differs from that found in most history books. They talk about racial unrest; he talks about terror cells and a war being waged to create a white supremist state. Tera W. Hunter’s exploration of the Shermantown neighbourhood also caught my eye.
Four hundred years of history may sound a daunting read but it’s not. All the essays bar one are between 3 and 5 pages, meaning this can easily be read, slowly but steadily, at the rate of one essay per day - a pace that would allow plenty of time for reflection.
Unique and Unmissable.
It’s a community history, a compilation of eighty essays, each by a different author. The authors came from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines; this is not a book authored solely by academic historians. Some essays focused on a person, some an event, some an object, others an idea. I loved the variety of topics, styles and voices. Each essay covered a five year period and they were arranged chronologically which gave the book a flow, a sense of historical progression and a cohesiveness. The essays were divided into ten sections, each of which ended with a poem that reflected on the preceding essays. I’ve never seen this done before but I thought it was very effective. The poetry brought a different dimension and I wished some visual arts had been able to be included also.
Another thing that really stood out is the way most, if not all, essays explicitly linked the events of the past with those of the present. This is not a book of dry facts from the past; this is history that clearly explains the present, and sadly indicates the way things have not changed as much as they ought.
It’s very hard to review such a diverse collection. Personally I especially enjoyed the essays that looked at the 1600 and 1700s since it’s a period of US history that I’m less familiar with. Michael Harriot’s essay on the Reconstruction era really stood out because of it’s honest language, language that differs from that found in most history books. They talk about racial unrest; he talks about terror cells and a war being waged to create a white supremist state. Tera W. Hunter’s exploration of the Shermantown neighbourhood also caught my eye.
Four hundred years of history may sound a daunting read but it’s not. All the essays bar one are between 3 and 5 pages, meaning this can easily be read, slowly but steadily, at the rate of one essay per day - a pace that would allow plenty of time for reflection.
Unique and Unmissable.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Forced institutionalization, Gun violence, Murder, Police brutality, Racism, Slavery, and Violence
thebakerbookworm's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
5.0
This ambitious book is definitely worth reading and very unique. Containing essays and poems, including works by Ijeoma Oluo, Robert Jones Jr., Isabel Wilkerson, and Angela Davis, each section covers five years, presenting history in a manageable way to grasp how each event affected future events, and how we are still seeing the effects of long-past actions play out in today's world.
I highly recommend the audiobook. Each essay has a new narrator, sometimes the author of the essay, and hearing all the different voices in this way...it really gives you a community feeling. I think the different styles of the essays (some felt like memoirs, some were just straight history) also reiterated how everyone views history slightly differently, based on our own personal experiences. I enjoyed hearing all these perspectives and it challenged me to think about certain events in a new light.
You will, of course, recognize the major historical events discussed, but most of the essays introduce minor characters in history, the ones who have been all but forgotten. This book is worth reading for those people alone—inspiring stories and heartbreaking ones and stories that will make you angry and outraged, but most of all, stories that will help you understand. We can't prevent history repeating itself without understanding it. This book is a great way to take a step toward doing that.
Thank you to Libro.fm., Random House Audio, and the author for my ALC.
I highly recommend the audiobook. Each essay has a new narrator, sometimes the author of the essay, and hearing all the different voices in this way...it really gives you a community feeling. I think the different styles of the essays (some felt like memoirs, some were just straight history) also reiterated how everyone views history slightly differently, based on our own personal experiences. I enjoyed hearing all these perspectives and it challenged me to think about certain events in a new light.
You will, of course, recognize the major historical events discussed, but most of the essays introduce minor characters in history, the ones who have been all but forgotten. This book is worth reading for those people alone—inspiring stories and heartbreaking ones and stories that will make you angry and outraged, but most of all, stories that will help you understand. We can't prevent history repeating itself without understanding it. This book is a great way to take a step toward doing that.
Thank you to Libro.fm., Random House Audio, and the author for my ALC.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Hate crime, Police brutality, Racism, and Slavery
nicknelson07's review
challenging
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
tense
fast-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Grief, Hate crime, Murder, Physical abuse, Police brutality, Racial slurs, Racism, Slavery, and Violence
mfieldshalva's review
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
sad
tense
medium-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism, Slavery, and Police brutality
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