This book has gotten a load of press, particularly since the Trump election. Reviewers and pundits see it as an explanation of the Trump phenomenon — who voted for that rat bastard and why? The disaffected and neglected white working class, that’s who! Of course, it is a mistake to think that it is just the white working class who bear responsibility for Trump. As Ta Nehisi Coates and others have pointed out, Trump’s support is all about being white, with class having little to […]
She was, all by herself, an entire tribe of contradictions
You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me is a memoir about Sherman Alexie’s mother Lillian, his childhood, and Native American history; it’s about grief, anger, and forgiveness; it’s about victims of abuse, their bullies, and fighting back as a point of honor. It’s about the specific lives of Lillian Alexie and her son, and the general experience of Native Americans in white America. Ultimately, in order to try to understand the mother who both gave him so much and hurt him so much, Alexie […]
“You can’t choose blindness when it suits you”
At 153 pages, one can get through The Ballad of Black Tom in an afternoon, but the issues that author Victor LaValle raises will stay with you long beyond that. This is a fantasy/horror novella set in 1924 New York City. The main characters are in touch with the mystical realm, but their interests in it will lead to horrors beyond imagination. There will be monsters, and some are of their own making. Though set in the ‘20s, LaValle’s story is a brilliant commentary on […]
The Banality of Racism
Citizen: An American Lyric (2014) was a finalist for the National Book Award for poetry, the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry, and winner of many other literary prizes. It is a series of reflections written as poetry on racism in its many forms, from childhood through adulthood, from everyday personal experiences to those that make national news. Rankine, with precise and evocative language, provides a series of images with words that demonstrate the relentlessness and predictability of racism in America […]