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A review by thebakerbookworm
Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019 by Ibram X. Kendi, Keisha N. Blain
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