Siri Hustvedt's essays bring into focus the profound contradictions of motherhood — often eclipsed by the cultural idealization of mothers as the model of self-sacrificing nurturance.
(Image credit: Simon & Schuster)
UnCovered review by Collette Jones, Librarian, ACLS Pleasantville Branch
THE 1619 PROJECT, created by Nikole Hannah-Jones, is the new book expansion version of the 2019 New York Times essays written by journalists. The new book adds to the collection of essays with historical points of view and poems reflecting racial injustice and a narrative explaining the historical perspective of the criminalization of enslaved people. History is not just about learning what happened, but it is just as important how we think about what happened. Re-framing America’s beginning from 1776 to 1619, when the first slave ship arrived, brings slavery and racism as central points of reference to the origin story of American people. Hannah-Jones refers to Black Americans as the country’s “true founding fathers as so deserving as those men cast in alabaster in the nation’s capital.”
Civil Rights Lawyer Bryan Stevenson’s chapter titled “Punishment,” and another chapter titled “Fear” written by legal scholar Michelle Alexander, push the reader to examine and trace the 13th Amendment. It is eye-opening that there is a loophole which ended involuntary servitude except as a punishment for crime whereby the party shall be convicted.
The suggestion that the New Jim Crow author is tracing this part of American history and tying it into the current crisis with private prisons and mass incarceration is riveting.
Historian Carol Anderson writes a piece “Self-Defense” and traces the second amendment, claiming it did not concede the right of Black Americans to bear arms because enslaved people were not considered citizens.
Ibram X. Kendi writes that America requires a Third Reconstruction to address unfulfilled promises. The final chapter by Hannah-Jones identifies priorities currently that need attention that include: wages, universal healthcare, childcare, college, student loan debt, and cash repartitions for Black Americans.
Other “targeted investments” include enforcing civil rights laws for housing, education, employment in Black communities across the country.
Poignant writing. Compelling storytelling. Timely. Provocative. Controversial.
Tabitha Lasley spent six months in Aberdeen, Scotland, interviewing men who work on offshore oil rigs. Along the way, she had an all-consuming affair with one of the very first men she interviewed.
(Image credit: Harper Collins)
The monster-fighting series has become a huge hit since its 2019 launch, so Boom! is releasing the first 15 episodes in this deluxe hardcover.
(Image credit: BOOM! Entertainment, Inc)
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