A smart and empathetic analysis that seeks to understand, but not to condone.
A piercing look at the phenomenon of Latino right-wing extremism—not new, but ever more pronounced.
It defies logic, suggests Vice News/MSNBC correspondent Ramos, that Latinos should be found among the ranks of the Proud Boys and other far-right groups, but there they are. In the wake of the El Paso Walmart mass shooting of 2019, she writes, “it was so clear in my mind that Latinos’ common enemy was the anti-immigrant, white nationalist voice.” And yet, there was the likes of Enrique Tarrio, who, though of at least 40 percent African origin, “had turned into one of the far right’s most ardent spokespersons.” Ramos identifies three cultural strains that contribute to Latinos’ prominence in the ranks of the white supremacist/right-wing/nationalist movement. The first strain is tribalism, the need to identify with a group and, in doing so, sometimes to stand in opposition to another group, presumably inferior to one’s own; while not exactly a case of Stockholm syndrome, somehow the white nationalists’ fear of non-whites “replacing” them has become part of the political baggage of a sizable number of Latinos, most but by far not all young men. The quest to become “real Americans,” Ramos hazards, “could be increasingly driving some Latinos toward extreme nativism, for there is nothing more nationalistic than making immigrants, a sworn enemy of many white Americans, your enemy as well.” Another aspect is traditionalism, which reinforces leanings toward stances such as Christian nationalism and anti-LGBTQ+ activism; still another is the trauma of racism and its poisonous, ego-destroying effects. While decrying the result, Ramos suggests that only when Latinos embrace “both the beauty and the darkness of our roots” will the population, by then the demographic majority—sometime around the year 2045, she adds hopefully—become self-confident, independent, and even “liberated.”
A smart and empathetic analysis that seeks to understand, but not to condone.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9780593701362
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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