Reckoning with Public History: A Review of How the Word is Passed by Clint Smith

How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

For almost a decade Americans have once again attempted to grapple with its history of slavery, segregation, and racism. Yet current political movements for justice are not the only ways in which Americans can do so. In many of our public historic sites attempts are made to explain this history as well. Sometimes this story is told well, other times it is not. In this combination of history and travelogue, Mr. Smith takes his reader on a journey to several places across America and one place in Africa that have a direct connection to America’s history of slavery to see how that history is presented or, in some cases, obfuscated.

Starting with Thomas Jefferson’s home, Monticello, and ending in one of the many ports where Africans were forcibly removed from their homeland to the slave markets and plantations of America and elsewhere, Mr. Smith does a tremendous job of showing how central these places are to America’s history of slavery and, by extension, how central the history of slavery is to the development of the United States of America as a nation.  Like any book dealing honestly with this subject, this is not an easy read.  The amount of suffering and death that the system of chattel slavery incurred is staggering, disheartening, and quite counter to the story of America many of us learned in our classrooms.  And yet, illustrating this counter narrative is exactly the point of this book.  By showing how many of our public historic sites tell the story of slavery in America, and too often fail to do so, it forces the reader to seriously question the traditional story of America as the land of the free and the home of the brave.  Once that narrative is questioned, it then becomes possible to tell a more complete and honest history of our country and ask what can be done in the present to make this country what we have always been told it was.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book.  As a poet, Mr. Smith brings his skill with the written word to bear on a difficult topic and thus puts the reader in these places as though they were there themselves.  His interviews with tour guides and average people alike helps to illustrate just how our educational system and our public historic sites have failed to tell a full and honest story about the history of slavery in America.  And at the sites that Mr. Smith visits that obscures that history, whether by design or by accident, he does a tremendous job of setting the record straight.  Though this book is not a comprehensive examination of these public sites, this book can be the starting point for discussing how we do talk about America’s past and what can be done to improve it.  Judging by the number of politicians and “parent groups” that are currently seeking to ban books and textbooks from schools and libraries that try to tell a more honest history of America, a book like this couldn’t be more timely.

Whether you are a lifelong American history buff or new to the subject, whether you have visited all of these historic sites or none of them, this is a great book to start with when examining the full story of America’s slave past.

View all my reviews

Hurdling Though Life & Fine Dining: A Review of Notes From a Young Black Chef by Kwame Onwuachi with Joshua David Stein

Notes from a Young Black Chef by Kwame Onwuachi

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Thanks to several reality cooking shows, the working world of fine dining has gained quite the reputation as harsh place. Iron Chef and Gordon Ramsay’s shows have all shown just demanding a career being a chef can be. Unfortunately, like many professions, people of color face unique barriers to becoming chefs, not the least of which includes a prejudice that they either can’t be fine dining chefs or a belief that they can only do variations on stereotypical foods. The great benefit of this book is to directly challenge those prejudices and confront the racism that can be just beneath the surface of the fine dining industry. At the same time, Mr. Onwuachi writes a wonderful memoir that reminds the reader that, much like the author himself, it is not always a straight line to our dreams.

The descendant of both Nigerian and Jamaican lineage, Mr. Onwuachi grew up with a mother in the catering business.  Though he has known cooking from his earliest days, as this book shows, it was not straight line from there to celebrity chef.  Indeed, he was sent away to live his grandfather in Nigeria for two years and at one point in his life he was going down a dark path of selling drugs.  And yet, this winding path led him to cooking on fishing boats in the Gulf Coast, being a student at the Culinary Institute of America, and apprenticing and working at some of the finest diners in New York City.  Mr. Onwuachi, with the assistance of co-author Joshua David Stein, writes a deeply personal and reflective memoir.  While he writes in great detail how he busted his butt to get to where he is, he’s also not afraid to reflect on how some lucky breaks came at just the right moments to set him on his path.  As said before, this is a great reminder that our journey’s through life are not always glorious or straightforward.  There can be ups and downs throughout and nothing is guaranteed.  

Another valuable aspect of this book is how it calls out the racism that is just beneath the surface of the fine dining industry.  Sadly, like many industries and professions in America, there is not a great deal of diversity with some of the most famous chefs being primarily white.  Mr. Onwuachi helps reveal why that is by cataloguing each instance of either subtle or outright racist behavior he had to face.  Whether it was a potential investor telling him outright that people can only think of a black chef making fried chicken meals, as though he could not cook anything “serious”, or the abusive behavior from a head chef that was frequently racist in tone and behavior, Mr. Onwuachi directly and indirectly calls out the racism that is prevalent within the system.  While this is not the central focus of the book, it is nonetheless a valuable reminder that so much of a culture de facto segregated, even though we would like to think it is not.

The only complaint I have about this book is that it feels incomplete.  Mr. Onwuachi notes that he is a young chef, 27 by the end of the book, and he only just opened and closed his first restaurant in Washington, D.C.  So, the end of the book finds him at an in-between moment in his life and career.  He is certainly still determined to open a new restaurant in D.C., which, according to my limited internet research, he did not long after this book was published.  Still, it does leave this book at an interesting and, slightly, unsatisfying place.  I do hope there will be a follow up to this book in the future where Mr. Onwuachi writes about his life and career from this point onward.  In spite of that, the transitional ending does not diminish my overall enjoyment of this book too much and should not diminish yours either.

Written with confidence and reflection, Mr. Onwuachi takes the reader on a journey through his life while also revealing the hurdles for young black chefs in the fine dining world.  If you are a fan of food memoirs, but have read too many by older, successful white chefs, I recommend this book to you.

View all my reviews

City of Blinding Lights: A Review of City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty

The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Since J.R.R. Tolkien wrote one of the first modern fantasy series with both The Hobbit, or There and Back Again and The Lord of the Rings, much of the fantasy landscape has been dominated by white, Northern European roadmap mythologies and tropes. However, in recent years a slew of authors have been writing fantasy novels from new perspectives and breaking this mould. Tomi Adeyemi, for example, has published two YA fantasy novels based on African mythology. In this novel, Ms. Chakraborty has written an excellent fantasy novel based on Middle Eastern mythology and folklore that further breaks that old mould.

Set around the time of Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt, this book follows two main characters: Nahri, a Cairo street thief with an unknown pedigree, and Ali, a sensitive and devout prince of Daevabad, the mythic and titular city of brass in this novel.  When Nahri accidentally frees Dara, an ancient Daeva (or Djinn) warrior, from a magical imprisonment, thus endangering her life, they flee across the Middle East to try to find safety in Daevabad.  But their journey to the City of Brass is only the beginning of their travails as the conquest of the city centuries ago has led to oppression and racial tension within the city that threatens to blow up at any point.  Ali, in his desire to do good, walks a precarious line between the supporting the city’s oppressed subjects and remaining loyal to his family.  But Nahri and Dara’s arrival in Daevabad threatens to break all of these tensions wide open.

One of the key features of any new fantasy series is the world-building.  Without quality world-building, a fantasy series can completely collapse.  Thankfully, Ms. Chakraborty has done an incredible job of building up this fantasy world.  It is populated with numerous races and creatures, each one of them with a unique origin and magical powers.  For those of you looking for a dense new fantasy world to jump into, look no further than this novel.  That said, Ms. Chakraborty’s world-building is both a strength and a weakness.  At times, the amount of background and number of different magical races, each with their own particular origin, powers, and grievances felt a little too overwhelming.  I was especially confused by the conflict between Daevabad’s residents that informs much of the novel’s plot and it wasn’t until I had finished the book that it started to click a little.  Ms. Chakraborty does have a few parts in the first half of the book where the world is explained to Nahri and the reader, so I would suggest that new readers slow down at those parts and maybe even reread them to make sure that they understand everything.

Fantasy novels are also known for having a good amount of action in its narrative and this book is no exception.  From Nahri and Dara’s close calls on the road to Daevabad to the climactic battle at the end of the novel, Ms. Chakraborty knows how to write a pulse-pounding action sequence.  I was totally enthralled by the climax as narrative threads and characters smashed up against each other in a glorious mess that makes me eager to find out what happens next.  There is a good amount of political intrigue here to satiate any Game of Thrones fans.  There is also a bit of a love triangle that happens between the three main characters that, on its surface, may seem a little trope-ish and rushed, especially near the middle of the book, but actually feels right for this story.  That said, there is a lot of time jumping that happens in this story.  For example, in one chapter, Nahri and Dara have just entered the city and in the next chapter two weeks have passed.  To be fair, significant time jumping was probably necessary to keep the narrative without unnecessarily slowing down, but I nevertheless felt a little whiplash reading this book at times.

Overall, this is an excellent start to new type of fantasy novels that continues to break the old mould and reinvigorate the genre.  If you are looking for something new and unique in your fantasy books, I would highly recommend this book to you.

View all my reviews

A Final Link to the Past: A Review of Barracoon by Zora Neale Hurston

Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" by Zora Neale Hurston

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

At the dawn of the 20th century, historians, sociologists, and folklorists fanned out across the country to gather up the stories of people across America who had lived through dramatic times, particularly the Civil War. The narratives of formerly enslaved African-Americans were especially prized. In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston, not quite yet the author and oral historian people would remember her to be, interviewed an African by the name of Cudjo Lewis, who at the time was the last surviving African to be captured in Africa, sold into slavery, and shipped across the “Middle Passage” to America. Through these interviews, Ms. Hurston retells Cudjo Lewis’s life to modern readers in this fine, but short book.

The Atlantic Slave Trade was officially abolished in 1808, but that did not stop white enslavers from trying to ship new cargo loads of enslaved Africans to these shores.  The Clotilda was one of the last slave ships to make the journey, carrying over 100 Africans into slavery in America in 1860, on the very eve of the Civil War.  Cudjo Lewis, or Kossula as he was known in Africa, was one of those enslaved Africans and when Ms. Hurston began to interview in the late 1920s, he was the last survivor from that ship.  Mr. Lewis describes his life in Africa, from his tribe to his father’s esteemed position as a royal bodyguard, in idyllic terms.  In contrast, his description of the massacre of his tribe by another African tribe, which led to the beheading of his king right in front of him and his subsequent life in slavery, is horrifying.  Once he is freed by Union soldiers at the end of the Civil War, his life as a free man in the segregated South is just as tragic.  Mr. Lewis relates how nearly all of his children were murdered by white supremacy in one way or another by the dawn of the 20th century.  It is an absolutely heartbreaking story.

That said, the actual narrative of Cudjo Lewis’s life is rather short.  For a story that covers well over 60 years, Ms. Hurston manages to fit his life story into less than 100 pages, with about another 20 or so pages dedicated to some miscellaneous tales Mr. Lewis told.  Though Ms. Hurston may have been restricted by what Mr. Lewis relayed to her, and though Ms. Hurston tried to supplement his recollections with outside sources, this story goes by way too fast.  I would not have minded if Ms. Hurston had lingered on certain parts of Mr. Lewis’s narrative either with her own thoughts or with some supplemental materials.

One other thing that made this book difficult to love was Ms. Hurston’s use of dialect.  This book written early in her career, Ms. Hurston tries to capture exactly what Cudjo Lewis was saying and how he said it through the use dialect.  The idea, from my little bit of research, is that the characters like Cudjo Lewis are suppose to feel more real and alive than if Ms. Huston had tried to translate his dialect into plain language.  But, to me, dialect just makes it more difficult to understand what is being said and, thus, there were a few things I had missed that needed to be pointed out to me in the afterword by this book’s editor, Deborah G. Plant.  Ms. Hurston proved in her later novels, Moses, Man of the Mountain and Serpah on the Suwanee (which I am currently making my way through in the Library of America’s great collection of her novels & short stories) that it is possible to relay the flavor of dialect without actually writing in dialect.  To me, the use of dialect here does not make Cudjo Lewis’s story more real, it just adds an unnecessary layer of complexity.  

I must commend the editor though for including two things in particularly that make this book a little better.  First, her own afterword where she reviews some of the key points of the tale was critical.  For example, I did not fully understand what had happened to Cudjo Lewis’s children while reading his account, so the afterword helped to clear up some confusion that I had.  Second, the inclusion of Alice Walker’s essay “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston” at the back of the book was fascinating.  If you have not read that essay, then you should, even if you have already read and loved Zora Neale Hurston’s works.

Overall, this book is fine, but it is a little short and, due to Ms. Hurston’s use of dialect, difficult to read at times.  But, Cudjo Lewis’s tale is a necessary reading as a reminder of the oppressive systems created in America that enslaved and terrorized Africans and African-Americans for centuries.  This is a book not just for fans of Zora Neale Hurston, but for people who are also interested in the history of both Antebellum and Jim Crow oppression Africans and African-Americans faced during the 19th century.

View all my reviews

"Hello Magic, welcome to the war!" A Review of Children of Virtue and Vengeance by Tomi Adeyemi

Children of Virtue and Vengeance by Tomi Adeyemi

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Some authors are able to catch lightening in a bottle with the first novel in a planned series. Tomi Adeyemi did just that with here incredible, fast-paced YA fantasy Children of Blood and Bone. However, it is very difficult to sustain that same momentum into the sequel. So has she done it? I would emphatically say yes! Ms. Adeyemi picks up the baton where she left it off and gives us another incredible and fast-paced YA fantasy adventure that should please those who fell in with the first novel. 

Set just a few weeks after the end of the previous novel, this book follows the same four characters as before: Zelie, the fierce village maji who brought magic back to Orïsha; Tzain, Zelie’s older brother; Amari, the runaway princess looking to take control and rule as a better monarch than her father; and Inan, the prince who ascends to the throne after his father’s death.  Zelie, her brother Tzain, and Amari have successfully brought magic back to the land, but because the ceremony was bungled now both the maji and supporters of the monarchy with magical ancestry have powers too.  This plunges all of Orïsha into a brutal civil war and threatens their morals, friendships, and lives.  The result is absolute dynamite!

Just as before, Ms. Adeyemi writes at an incredibly brisk pace.  Even some of the down moments where little action is happening feel rather fast.  What is different though is that, with magic now flooding Orïsha, Zelie is not the only person with magical powers.  Though there were not enough of these moments, I really enjoyed seeing Zelie and her other maji users test their abilities.  I also enjoyed the absolute raw emotions that all of our main characters are dealing with.  Every single one of them has already lost a low before the events of this book, and how they react to those loses and to each other is great.  This could’ve easily devolved into teen melodrama, but Ms. Adeyemi handles her characters and their motivations very well.

I only have two small gripes about this book.  The first is how quickly characters move from one location to the next.  While I didn’t quite catch how distant some of these locations are from each other, based on the map provided in the front and back of the book, it feels like her characters get teleportated around the map a lot.  It might have added some pages, but a chapter here and there with characters transiting between one location and the next would’ve allowed for some quieter character-building moments and wouldn’t have felt like characters were traversing the land so quickly.  Another small gripe I have is the ending.  Just like in the first book, Ms. Adeyemi ends the book with a heck of a cliffhanger.  Unlike the first book though, this book’s cliffhanger feels like it came straight out left field and, quite honestly, a bit like a deus ex machina to keep a few of the main characters alive.  This is both exciting as I can’t wait to see what happens next, but also a little frustrating as I am once again left scratching my head as to what exactly happened.  That said, these are both very small gripes and they aren’t enough to keep me from giving this book a full five stars.

Pulse pounding action, magic, raw emotions, moral ambiguity.  Ms. Adeyemi imbues this fantasy world with more than magic, but with real stakes for all of the characters involved.  If you loved the first book, you will love the next one too.

View all my reviews

"The Horror": A Review of King Leopold's Ghost

King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The colonial period in Africa is little known and little understood by Americans today, and yet that history is so pivotal to the creation of international human rights organizations that it should be better known and celebrated. In this meticulous work, Mr. Hochschild tells the devastating story of the Congo Free State, ruled by a tyrant, disguised in the veneer of constitutional monarchy and humanitarianism, with tools of terror that eerily prefigures the genocidal atrocities of the 20th century.

Starting with the story of how King Leopold II of Belgium deftly maneuvered both domestic and foreign politics in order to secure a colony under his direct control, Mr. Hochschild shows how the Congo Free State was always a colony of exploitation, built on the back of brutalized African slaves. The cast of characters is incredibly diverse, with such historical monsters as Henry Morton Stanley and León Rom (the latter of whom was probably one of the inspirations for Joseph Conrad's character, Mr. Kurtz, in Heart of Darkness), and brave men who risked much, including their lives, to tell the world of the atrocities happening in the Congo. Among these heroes include such people as George Washington Williams, E.D. Morel, and Roger Casement. One voice that is missing though, which Mr. Hochschild points out repeatedly, is the voice of the Africans themselves. Too few of their testimonies are recorded for posterity from this period. However, Mr. Hochschild does a tremendous job of trying to bring in their voices whenever he can.

Oftentimes, the atrocities are hard to read about. Africans were enslaved, mutilated, and massacred for a long time and, in spite of the successes of the international protest movement at the turn of the 20th century, several brutal colonial practices continued up to Congo's independence and even beyond. And yet, the international protest movement that Morel and others led would prefigure our conceptions of international human rights in the 20th and 21st centuries. One of the great things about this book is that Mr. Hochschild doesn't sugarcoat the truth, but it does mean that younger readers may want to wait a little bit before tackling such a heavy topic.

One thing I did not like about this book is how the details of how exactly the Congo Free State was initially operated and developed were not there. At one point, it appears that Henry Morton Stanley is setting the colony up in King Leopold's name, and then the next moment all the killings begin. This may be because of my quick reading of the first chapters, but I feel like there are a few steps between "Let's set up a colony" to "Let's enslave and murder everyone" that are missing here.

For anyone interested in world history, the history of colonialism in Africa, or the history of international human rights, this is an essential read. In its explicit condemnation of colonialism, it reminds us that we should never turn our backs on the cries of suffering around the world and work to end human rights abuses wherever they may happen.

View all my reviews