Both maddening and funny, an eye-opening look at how its daily targets cope with racism.
Comedy writer Ruffin recounts the endless indignities involved in being a Black woman in America, with her older sister as foil.
The Ruffin sisters grew up with a mother who “has a bad case of the smarts…and…isn’t fond of people messing with her children”—messing that comes daily from the White residents of Omaha, Nebraska, a city, Ruffin reminds us, that may sound like Hicksville, USA, but is larger than New Orleans, Pittsburgh, and Minneapolis. Those White citizens think nothing of using the N-word, nor of touching Black women’s hair, nor of assuming that the Black residents of Omaha are violent and thievish. The latter assumptions build in ways that the sisters find sometimes amusing, sometimes hurtful, always astonishingly awful. Lamar—who remained in Omaha while Ruffin moved to New York, where she writes for Late Night With Seth Meyers—recounts a trip to a store when a friend asked about the cost of a Rolex on display. Told “expensive,” her friend replied, “Bitch, I’ll take two.” Lamar got the same response when she asked about a coffee table and then was floored when the manager informed her of the hardly shattering price tag of $200. Some indignities are nearly inexplicable: One man tried an online come-on with a Confederate flag as backdrop; an elementary school teacher attributed slavery to keeping-up-with-the-Joneses peer pressure. “The reaction always varies because you can only put up with what you can put up with when you can put up with it,” writes Ruffin. “And here’s a little reminder that we shouldn’t have to put up with this shit AT ALL!” Most of the time, the sisters’ reactions are a kind of knowing exasperation. “We are not into trying to educate white America, but maybe we accidentally did,” they conclude. The education is no accident, and White readers can certainly use the wake-up call.
Both maddening and funny, an eye-opening look at how its daily targets cope with racism.Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5387-1936-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.
A thoughtful program for eradicating poverty from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted.
“America’s poverty is not for lack of resources,” writes Desmond. “We lack something else.” That something else is compassion, in part, but it’s also the lack of a social system that insists that everyone pull their weight—and that includes the corporations and wealthy individuals who, the IRS estimates, get away without paying upward of $1 trillion per year. Desmond, who grew up in modest circumstances and suffered poverty in young adulthood, points to the deleterious effects of being poor—among countless others, the precarity of health care and housing (with no meaningful controls on rent), lack of transportation, the constant threat of losing one’s job due to illness, and the need to care for dependent children. It does not help, Desmond adds, that so few working people are represented by unions or that Black Americans, even those who have followed the “three rules” (graduate from high school, get a full-time job, wait until marriage to have children), are far likelier to be poor than their White compatriots. Furthermore, so many full-time jobs are being recast as contracted, fire-at-will gigs, “not a break from the norm as much as an extension of it, a continuation of corporations finding new ways to limit their obligations to workers.” By Desmond’s reckoning, besides amending these conditions, it would not take a miracle to eliminate poverty: about $177 billion, which would help end hunger and homelessness and “make immense headway in driving down the many agonizing correlates of poverty, like violence, sickness, and despair.” These are matters requiring systemic reform, which will in turn require Americans to elect officials who will enact that reform. And all of us, the author urges, must become “poverty abolitionists…refusing to live as unwitting enemies of the poor.” Fortune 500 CEOs won’t like Desmond’s message for rewriting the social contract—which is precisely the point.
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 9780593239919
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
