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alexisgarcia's review
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racial slurs, Racism, Classism, Violence, Slavery, Death, Grief, Gun violence, and Police brutality
ggoldberg626's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
5.0
bohemiangem's review
5.0
Listen to the audio book, it's such a great production! That being said, I cant wait to buy a hard copy.
klanca's review
5.0
Glad I listened to this as it was very powerful. Will likely need a hard copy for my bookshelf.
kleonard's review
5.0
An astonishing and necessary book full of essays and poetry all trying to explain and trace the legacies of enslavement in the United States and its colonies. Each short entry is packed with information and new ways of thinking about this issue, and the poems are stellar and hard-hitting and brilliant. A companion piece to the 1619 project, this book is essential reading for all Americans, if not everyone everywhere.
squidreads12's review
challenging
emotional
informative
slow-paced
5.0
Incredible!!!
Just the breadth of this project is mind boggling, taking 90 Black writer’s perspectives and using those ideas to demonstrate 400 years of Black history? Whew, but was it well done. The history, the connections, the poetry. It was all so moving and also informative.
Everyone should read this book.
Just the breadth of this project is mind boggling, taking 90 Black writer’s perspectives and using those ideas to demonstrate 400 years of Black history? Whew, but was it well done. The history, the connections, the poetry. It was all so moving and also informative.
Everyone should read this book.
jarcher's review against another edition
3.0
I absolutely love the concept. The book is a compilation of stories of African America spanning from the first (recorded) slave ship landing in 1619 to present day. It’s broken up into 5 year increments with a different black scholar/artist covering each chunk of history. I really enjoyed a lot of individual passages, but they all felt a little too brief to me. I found myself feeling cut short in many fascinating discussions. That combined with passages ranging stylistically from poetry, to narrative nonfiction, to personal essay, and more made the text feel more like disjointed snippets than a harmonized whole.
felbooks1975's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
sad
5.0
lillimoore's review
5.0
America is not like a blanket—one piece of unbroken cloth, the same color, the same texture, the same size. America is more like a quilt—many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread, and so is this beautiful and very unique quilt of writing that, like the quilt of America described by the Reverend Jesse Jackson, is all tied together by a common thread: the history of Black America. From the time the first recorded people of African descent arrived to what is now the United States in 1619, Black people have faced intense racism, beginning with slavery and continuing through the Jim Crow Era, Civil Rights Movement, and Black Lives Matter movement. Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain have gathered 90 Black writers and poets to each create their own square of this quilt and weave it together, told through stories that capture the essence of being African American in each 5 year time period from the landing of the White Lion—the first recorded ship carrying slaves to America—in 1619 through to the ongoing fight of the Black Lives Matter movement against police brutality and the mistreatment of Black people in America today.
This is a heartbreaking and beautiful book. It is hard to give it 5 stars and categorize it as a favorite—even though with its gorgeous, diverse styles of writing it quickly became one—because the reality of what Black Americans have endured in the past 400 years continues to break me. So if it breaks me, a white person living in rural Colorado with a hell of a lot of other white people, how much is it breaking the millions of Black people who endure daily the lasting legacies of racism, segregation, police brutality, and injustices by both the United States government and its white citizens? But they've never broken, not completely. What this book is at its core is a showcase of Black excellence and resilience as much as it is a funeral service in words, mourning all that has befallen this group of people at the hands of white supremacists promoting and benefiting from institutional frameworks that have caused and continue to cause systemic racism throughout our nation's history.
There are so many nuggets of history in these pages that so many Americans never heard about in history class, myself included. There are so many compelling authors featured that I can't wait to dive further into. I learned a staggering amount from this book! Some of the topics and authors that really stood out to me were Nikole Hannah-Jones' recollection of the arrival of Black people to this land in 1619, Maurice Carlos Ruffin's story of Anthony Johnson in the colony of Virginia, Mary E. Hicks' harrowing account of the Middle Passage, Alexis Pauline Gumbs' chapter on Phillis Wheatley, a discussion of the Fugitive Slave Act by Deirdre Cooper Owens, Derrick Alridge's nuanced look at the life of Booker T. Washington, Jasmine Griffin's ode to the Harlem Renaissance and what it meant for Black creative expression, Bakari Kitwana's explanation of the cultural significance of hip-hop, and so many more excellent essays and poems that told Black history in such a unique fashion.
As with many historical compendiums, some readers may find themselves wanting more. More detail on each story, more focus on significant moments in history. But that's why I awarded this 5 stars—it is a poignant if somewhat surface level introduction to all of these stories making up this centuries-old quilt, that belongs in the collection of any and all students of history and sociology, which ought to be all of us. The narration of this audiobook was also very cool and I really enjoyed hearing so many different voices lend themselves to so many different perspectives on Black history, but I'm eager to check out a physical copy, because there is a lot of information packed into this book and it can be easy to miss important moments when listening. Expertly curated and edited, this is a book you should be sure not to miss, because these are stories we should never have missed in the first place.
This is a heartbreaking and beautiful book. It is hard to give it 5 stars and categorize it as a favorite—even though with its gorgeous, diverse styles of writing it quickly became one—because the reality of what Black Americans have endured in the past 400 years continues to break me. So if it breaks me, a white person living in rural Colorado with a hell of a lot of other white people, how much is it breaking the millions of Black people who endure daily the lasting legacies of racism, segregation, police brutality, and injustices by both the United States government and its white citizens? But they've never broken, not completely. What this book is at its core is a showcase of Black excellence and resilience as much as it is a funeral service in words, mourning all that has befallen this group of people at the hands of white supremacists promoting and benefiting from institutional frameworks that have caused and continue to cause systemic racism throughout our nation's history.
There are so many nuggets of history in these pages that so many Americans never heard about in history class, myself included. There are so many compelling authors featured that I can't wait to dive further into. I learned a staggering amount from this book! Some of the topics and authors that really stood out to me were Nikole Hannah-Jones' recollection of the arrival of Black people to this land in 1619, Maurice Carlos Ruffin's story of Anthony Johnson in the colony of Virginia, Mary E. Hicks' harrowing account of the Middle Passage, Alexis Pauline Gumbs' chapter on Phillis Wheatley, a discussion of the Fugitive Slave Act by Deirdre Cooper Owens, Derrick Alridge's nuanced look at the life of Booker T. Washington, Jasmine Griffin's ode to the Harlem Renaissance and what it meant for Black creative expression, Bakari Kitwana's explanation of the cultural significance of hip-hop, and so many more excellent essays and poems that told Black history in such a unique fashion.
As with many historical compendiums, some readers may find themselves wanting more. More detail on each story, more focus on significant moments in history. But that's why I awarded this 5 stars—it is a poignant if somewhat surface level introduction to all of these stories making up this centuries-old quilt, that belongs in the collection of any and all students of history and sociology, which ought to be all of us. The narration of this audiobook was also very cool and I really enjoyed hearing so many different voices lend themselves to so many different perspectives on Black history, but I'm eager to check out a physical copy, because there is a lot of information packed into this book and it can be easy to miss important moments when listening. Expertly curated and edited, this is a book you should be sure not to miss, because these are stories we should never have missed in the first place.