Reviews tagging 'Sexual violence'

The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story by Nikole Hannah-Jones

20 reviews

goldenluck's review

emotional informative inspiring sad slow-paced

4.5

Treatises on universally impactful issues are interspersed with emotional poems and short stories. The book explores every corner of American history and culture and how it has been impacted by slavery, from the obvious civil rights movements to the unexpected transportation planning. As such, it can be a hard read, but one well worth it. The information this book divulged should be covered in schools or any serious study of America, and anyone with an ounce of empathy needs to read it. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racial slurs

Moderate: Racism and Sexual violence

mysterymom40's review

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Murder, Rape, Sexual violence, Racism, Violence, Death, Medical trauma, Kidnapping, Torture, Slavery, Racial slurs, Physical abuse, and Bullying

Moderate: Police brutality, Child death, Colonisation, and Forced institutionalization

kimveach's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

A book blogger suggested that this is a great audiobook. I'm afraid I have to disagree. The authors read the essays; unfortunately, not all authors are great narrators. The performances of the poems would be the exception. After nearly falling asleep while driving the car, I decided to try reading it another way. Thankfully, Kindle had a sale that included both the written and audio versions of the book.

The essays are enlightening and contain the history I wish I had learned in school.

While there have been criticisms, I feel this New York Times response best describes the purpose of the book. "The very premise of The 1619 Project, in fact, is that many of the inequalities that continue to afflict the nation are a direct result of the unhealed wound created by 250 years of slavery and an additional century of second-class citizenship and white-supremacist terrorism inflicted on black people (together, those two periods account for 88 percent of our history since 1619). These inequalities were the starting point of our project — the facts that, to take just a few examples, black men are nearly six times as likely to wind up in prison as white men, or that black women are three times as likely to die in childbirth as white women, or that the median family wealth for white people is $171,000, compared with just $17,600 for black people. The rampant discrimination that black people continue to face across nearly every aspect of American life suggests that neither the framework of the Constitution nor the strenuous efforts of political leaders in the past and the present, both white and black, has yet been able to achieve the democratic ideals of the founding for all Americans."

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Genocide, Gore, Murder, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Slavery, Torture, Trafficking, Blood, Confinement, Deportation, Gun violence, Hate crime, Medical trauma, Forced institutionalization, Rape, Violence, Classism, Death, Injury/Injury detail, Racism, Death of parent, Grief, Police brutality, Racial slurs, and War

afreeby's review

challenging informative reflective fast-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Police brutality, Classism, Colonisation, Cultural appropriation, Hate crime, Sexual assault, Slavery, Murder, Sexism, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexual violence, Medical content, and Death

lettuce_read's review

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Slavery, Racial slurs, and Racism

Moderate: Rape, Sexual violence, and Violence

amandasbookreview's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative tense medium-paced

5.0

“Until Americans replace mythology with history, until Americans unveil and halt the progression of racism, an arc of the American universe will keep bending toward injustice.”

THE 1619 PROJECT

I started The 1619 Project by Nikole Hannah-Jones a couple months ago. Normally when I pick up a book I don’t pause. I don’t read other books in between. This book is a massive piece of journalism with more than one author. It is filled with primary sources and analyses the social, political, and economic injustices against Black Americans. So I read a section at a time, looked into the sources provided, and looked up the other contributing authors. The beginning introduces the arrival of enslaved Africans to Virginia in 1619. The publication date of this piece? –2019, 400 years after the first enslaved peoples arrived. The Pilgrims arrived in 1620. Just with the evidence of this date, The 1619 Project encourages the United States to review and acknowledge our history, not beginning with The Pilgrims but acknowledging the injustice laid on Black Americans and their contribution to our society in the face of slavery and racism that still exists today.

While Nikole Hannah-Jones developed this piece, it also has the contributions of several other authors, many of whose works I have read, and many of whose works that I need to read. The co-authors and contributors are Dorothy Roberts, Kahil Gibran Muhammad, Leslie Alexander, Michelle Alexander, Tiya Miles, Matthew Desmond, Jamelle Bouie, Martha S. Jones, Carol Anderson, Bryan Stevenson, Trymaine Lee, Linda Villarosa, Anthea Butler, Wesley Morris, Jeneen Interlandi, Kevin M. Kruse, Ibram K. Kendi, Jason Reynolds, Clint Smith, Sonia Sanchez, Gregory Pardlo, Kiese Laymon, Patricia Smith, Nafissa Thompson-Spires, Joshua Bennet, Natasha Tretheway, Camille T. Dungy, Rita Dove, Terry McMillan, Danez Smith, A. Van Jordan, Jasmine Mans, Yaa Gyasi, Forrest Hamer, Evie Shockley, Tracey K. Smith, ZZ Packer, Darryl Pickney, Lynn Nottage, Cornelius Eady, Tim Siebles, Tyehimba Jess, Jesmyn Ward, Barry Jenkins, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Robert Jones Jr., Eve L. Ewing, Yusef Komunyakaa, Terrance Hayes, Honoree Fanonne Jeffers, Nikkey Finney, Vievee Francis, and Claudia Rankine.

This is not an opinion piece. This is history, the true history, that many would like to see ignored. There is fear in accepting the truth. So many have criticized this book without even reading it, without looking at the evidence, despite the fact that the evidence has always been there. This piece also draws parallels from the dawn of the revolution to today’s politics. It discusses racism, and the policies that freed the enslaved but made sure that they could not rise were kept down by segregation and were not given the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They discuss how law enforcement policies were actually inspired by Slave Patrols-units that were formed to hunt down runaway slaves. They discuss how the Black body is automatically seen as criminal and therefore more subject to imprisonment and execution. This piece discusses everything from traffic laws and how white people opposed the MARTA in Georgia. Systematic racism has been embedded in every aspect of our society.

But there is hope.

“If we are truly a great nation, the truth cannot destroy us.”

THE 1619 PROJECT

The book concludes with what needs to be done in order to become the great nation that we claim to be. A great nation would acknowledge our history and make reparations and laws to atone for the injustice and make sure it never happens again.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Death, Emotional abuse, Murder, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexual violence, Slavery, Child death, Cultural appropriation, Forced institutionalization, Torture, Colonisation, Gaslighting, Hate crime, Medical trauma, Police brutality, Genocide, Gore, Gun violence, Trafficking, Violence, Rape, Religious bigotry, and Sexism

beccaruthe's review

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

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