Book #169 of 2022: Long Division by Kiese Laymon This 2013 authorial debut has some interesting ideas and a distinctive voice for its protagonist(s), but it strikes me as overall too jumbled and underdeveloped to land with much impact. The plot, as I understand it: a young Black teen in the modern age, struggling with …
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Book #51 of 2022: The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story by Nikole Hannah-Jones and The New York Times Magazine This volume is an expansion of the original New York Times Magazine article that was published to honor the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans to Virginia, highlighting American history through …
Book #172 of 2021: Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019 edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain This is a remarkable and remarkably ambitious project, bringing together eighty prominent African American writers, from Angela Davis to Jamelle Bouie to Isabel Wilkerson, in order to pen a sweeping account of …
Book #156 of 2021: The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race edited by Jesmyn Ward Not every entry in this collection of essays and poems quite lands for me, but all told it’s a powerful reflection from various African American writers near the start of the Black Lives Matter movement and just …
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