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A review by smblanc1793
The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story by Nikole Hannah-Jones
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.5
This book is something of a mirror image to the history myself (and many like me, I imagine) were taught in school. And yet it is so piercing and unrestrained that it forces you to reevaluate which set of stories are the reflection and which the reality. It is certainly not a light read—not in any sense of the word. Packed full of all the history we’re trained from an early age to ignore, which gives it both physical and emotional weight.
The majority of this collection is made up of essays, sometimes written with a quasi-poetic lilt, but mainly stark and to-the-point as is the convention for this kind of writing. It does, at times, get repetitive, but only because history itself is repetitive. Because the events within repeat and repeat under new names, and those they affect never completely break that cycle of suffering. There is something powerful in that alone.
But it is the stories and poems within, I think, that save this book from feeling too much like a history textbook—not that there’s anything wrong with a straightforward history. But these pieces of creative work, often imagining and chronicling the feelings of those who experienced slavery and oppression firsthand, add the right touch of emotion, of connection back to the level of the individual that often gets lost in stories as vast as this one. The book as a whole is powerful and painful and important, and I am glad I read it.
The majority of this collection is made up of essays, sometimes written with a quasi-poetic lilt, but mainly stark and to-the-point as is the convention for this kind of writing. It does, at times, get repetitive, but only because history itself is repetitive. Because the events within repeat and repeat under new names, and those they affect never completely break that cycle of suffering. There is something powerful in that alone.
But it is the stories and poems within, I think, that save this book from feeling too much like a history textbook—not that there’s anything wrong with a straightforward history. But these pieces of creative work, often imagining and chronicling the feelings of those who experienced slavery and oppression firsthand, add the right touch of emotion, of connection back to the level of the individual that often gets lost in stories as vast as this one. The book as a whole is powerful and painful and important, and I am glad I read it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence, Death, Xenophobia, Racism, and Slavery