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xcampuskiddo's reviews
245 reviews
Burning Down the House: The End of Juvenile Prison by Nell Bernstein
5.0
I yelled at the pages, I tried to figure out what to set fire to first, I found despair and I found hope - this is an excellently researched, emotionally riveting account of life in juvenile prisons and the ways in which the system has been reformed, regressed, and been entirely overturned in some states. It is a call - a plea - to do better by all children so that all of society will not continue to suffer.
Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
5.0
Incredible. A family comes to terms with three generations of racial history. This novel grapples with major themes, from drug use and incarceration to police brutality to interracial relationships and mixed-race children in a current-day Mississippi that is still struggling to come to terms with its own legacy of racial injustice. From a Black grandfather's time spent serving a Jim Crow-era jail sentence, to a Black mother's struggle to cope with the murder of her brother years before at the hands of a white boy, to a mixed-race son's determination to be a strong man for his sister and his grandparents, this novel sweeps the reader up into the long arc of history and carries them along on a swift and inexorable current to the culmination of all things. A hefty dose of spiritualism ties all of the threads together with the history of slavery, segregation, and racism in the deep South, and reminds us that the conditions of racism today did not arise spontaneously or in isolation; that police brutality has roots in the treatment of Black people before the Civil Rights era, that vigilante justice by white mobs perpetrated on Black individuals was a predecessor to the injustices that continue to be heaped onto Black people today, and that mass incarceration, though it happens to white people, as well, was used and continues to be used disproportionately as a method for oppressing and subjugating Black people. In a similar vein to Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing, this is an absolutely breathtaking must-read for anyone who looks to hear Black voices elevated, fictionalized or not, in the telling of their own histories.
The White Devil by Justin Evans
5.0
If you want a ghost story with strong overtones of Dead Poets' Society, this is the read for you. I highly recommend the audiobook version, if only because I personally believe that Christian Coulson should narrate pretty much everything (for another excellent narration, check out the audiobook version of A Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue). The story clips along at an engaging pace, the characters are perfectly flawed and sympathetic, and the arc rises and reaches its climax in a way that feels inexorably correct at the conclusion. I'm just sad that this is the only Justin Evans book available through my library's digital apps.