Eye-catching work that highlights moving stories of commitment and sacrifice.
Brief historical biographies and photographs of a variety of fighters for independence from colonial rule.
In this collaborative work first published in France in 2020, the authors present short narratives of crusaders for justice and independence from colonizers, ranging from India to Congo to Algeria. The book is divided into three parts: “Apprenticeship (1857-1926),” “Liberation (1927-1954),” and “The World Is Ours (1956-present).” Refreshingly, many of the figures profiled are little known to general readers: Manikarnika Tambe, queen of Jhansi, who refused to surrender to the British during the Indian Rebellion of 1857 (“she died fighting, never thinking that she would become the great heroine of Indian independence”); Alice Seeley Harris, a British missionary in King Leopold’s Congo who documented ongoing atrocities with her camera and revealed them to the world (“the incontrovertible evidence of the pictures provoked the first humanitarian scandal in modern times”); early Kenyan activist Mary Muthoni Nyanjiru, who helped lead “the women busily inventing a new society, a society not controlled by men”; and Gandhi’s colleague Sarojini Naidu, who fought tirelessly for “her sisters, the forgotten women of India—the widows, the unmarried, the women killed over a dowry dispute, the girls married off at age nine.” The French authors particularly focus on the anti-colonial struggles of French African countries, spotlighting the crusading work of Senegalese-born Lamine Senghor, French Army veteran, journalist, and militant communist; Vietnamese Communist leader Nguyen Ai Quoc, “later to be known as Ho Chi Minh”; and a host of Algerian independence activists and fighters. The authors cite Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar for his activism to abolish the caste system in India, especially for the untouchables, and Congo leader Patrice Lumumba’s hope to be a part of his country’s new ruling class is both inspiring and heartbreaking. With bold graphics and photographs and fiery depictions, the book is a fitting addition to any library collection on global colonialism and activism.
Eye-catching work that highlights moving stories of commitment and sacrifice.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63542-103-3
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Other Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2022
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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