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

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.