Reviews with content warning for Death - Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America 1619-2019

I'm a little conflicted with my rating here because I definitely think this a book I would like everyone to make time for, but I struggled to get through it, for a handful of reasons.

I listened to the audiobook, and while I've heard others praise this edition highly — and it was awesome to hear so many different Black voices — I just don't think this format was the right one for me to take in this material. Admittedly, I wasn't in the best mood while listening to most of it — which definitely didn't help given the subject matter — but I struggled to focus and gel with some of the chapters, especially a lot of the earlier ones.

I go back and forth between thinking the book was incredible because of its breadth and variety and thinking it was trying to pack in almost too much that I've left it not really remembering any details, which is what I went into the book hoping for. Again, this could be because I listened to the book as opposed to reading the words from a page.

I was a big fan of the structure — 10 parts spanning 40 years and each chapter spanning 5 — and it was fascinating travelling bit by bit from the 17th Century all the way to the present day. I also appreciated the occasional poems mixed in with the essays!

I think I might have preferred a series of books in a very similar style, but with some of the essays going more in depth, and perhaps them having a little bit more of a narrative thread through them.

All in all, a book that's definitely worth your time! My rating is heavily based on my personal enjoyment in the moment.

Note: Around 75% in, there's a chapter on Zora Neale Hurston. I skipped most of it for fear of spoilers of Their Eyes Were Watching God.

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talonsontypewriters's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

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jennie_white2008's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

5.0

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mydearwatsonbooks's review against another edition

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gabi_tron's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

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steveatwaywords's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.75

This collection of historical essays is so accessible, it's a wonder it is not more widely used in schools and public discourse. Each entry, focused usually on a small or local figure at some point in the 5-year span, is also given the broader context in the narrative of black experience and the American story and written by a different author. While some topics are expected (Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, Hip-Hop), none are "traditionally-taught" accounts but each reveals an unexpected (at least for me) connection, a significant consequence, or a series of details which--while barely planned by editors Kendi and Blain--underscore larger patterns.

Widely researched (though awkwardly cited with difficult-to-navigate and unmarked end notes), nearly every essay hints at still deeper scholarship to be revealed. I say "nearly every essay" because this is one of two concerns I had about the project:

1) While I am not certain of the directives given the various writers, not each approached the task with equal devotion to scholarship. I expected (and desired) analysis and judgments to accompany the topics and, especially in the earlier essays, these appeared, solidly built upon documented evidence. In a few (fortunately quite few) cases, however, there was more judgment than analysis and more still than documented detail. This was frustrating, as the tone for the book had been set by more focused historians earlier. But when the rhetoric grew powerful in place of scholarship, the interest in learning waned. In my view, it undermined the credibility of the collection as a whole.

2) My other concern is not truly that. As large as the collection is (80-odd brief essays with 10 poems), it is yet incredibly brief, barely skimming the richness and nuanced diversity of narratives we have of black history. In other words, I found myself reading the work as an introduction to larger studies (some completed or underway by the writers), or as a first volume, perhaps, to another few thousand which might still be written. To be sure, this is hardly a criticism but a printing limitation; but to that end, I would have appreciated a section which pushed readers to more serious scholarship out there on its topics. The brief writer bio entries at the end were in this way somewhat helpful, but not reliably focused on expanding the reader's experience.

Still, as I purge my bookshelf of over 5000 titles, <i>Four Hundred Souls</i> will stay, because it a volume I am confident to return.

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apworden's review against another edition

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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.

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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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