Another Hidden Gem Worth Picking Up: A Review of the Writings of James Weldon Johnson from the Library of America

James Weldon Johnson: Writings by James Weldon Johnson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I have been in love with the Library of America (LOA) for a long time now and there are two main reasons why. First, the uniform book designs are just gorgeous. Put a row of LOA’s books together on your shelf and they are a definite conversation start. On top of that, if you treat them well, these books will last a long time on your shelf long after your other books have yellowed and collected dust. The other reason why I love LOA books is because of their commitment to keeping great works of American literature, both well-known and lesser known, in print in perpetuity. This gives ordinary Americans a chance to discover more obscure, but wonderful, works by authors they may never have heard of, such as Henry Adams’s History of the United States During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and History of the United States During the Administrations of James Madison . This single-volume collection of the writings of James Weldon Johnson is another one of those more obscure gems that LOA has that deserves to better known.

James Weldon Johnson was an African-American polymath at the turn of the century.  He was a writer, an educator, a musical composer, a poet, an early leader of the NAACP, and a diplomat.  Sadly, I knew nothing about him until I picked up this book from LOA not too long ago.  And yet he had an impact on American politics and culture deeper than most people realize.  His novel, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, which is the first work included in this volume, is one of the first works in American literature to deal directly with the issues of colorism and white passing that are now more commonly discussed today.  His musical writing included the song “Lift Every Voice and Sing” is celebrated even today as the Black national anthem.  As the NAACP’s first executive secretary, he expanded the organizations reach into the South and initiated some of the first lawsuits against the region’s disenfranchisement of Black Americans, though Mr. Johnson would die long before those efforts would come to fruition in Brown v. Board of Education and the major civil rights laws of the 1960s.  And his work as a diplomat enabled him to write with great knowledge and insight on issues such as the U.S. occupation of Haiti (that essay is also included in this volume as well).  In many ways, James Weldon Johnson is a forerunner to both the Harlem Renaissance and the Civil Rights Movement.

This volume of his works is wonderful.  Along with Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man is Mr. Johnson’s own memoirs, which gives an intimate view of his life from his perspective.  Mr. Johnson’s essays are some of this books highlights, particularly his essay on the U.S. occupation of Haiti, which should be more widely read today as Haiti once again descends into political chaos and Americans wonder what, if anything, should be done.  The inclusion of several of Mr. Johnson’s poems and lyrics, including the famous “Lift Every Voice”, is also a treat.  The only weak point in this volume is the inclusion of a couple of chapters Mr. Johnson wrote for a book called Black Manhattan about Black Americans in the theater around the turn of the century.  As a writer of Broadway musicals himself, Mr. Johnson was an expert on the theater and it shows in these excerpts.  However, it is also a very esoteric subject.  Only those with a keen interest in the history of American theater, and especially of Black Americans in the theater, are likely to enjoy this section.

Overall, this another hidden gem within the Library of America’s collection.  This book should be read alongside the works of W.E.B Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, and other near contemporary Black authors of the period.  If you have made your way through the works of the Harlem Renaissance, I highly recommend this volume as your next read.

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Where Do We Go Now?: A Review of Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World by Fareed Zakaria

Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World by Fareed Zakaria

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

No event in recent history has been as disruptive to the world as the COVID-19 pandemic that, as of this writing, is still ongoing. Millions have died and millions more have been infected by this disease. In the United States, the number of deaths from COVID are comparable to the number of combat deaths during the Civil War. And the recession caused by the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns is on a par with the 2008 financial crises that we had only just recovered from. Much has been laid bare by this once in a century catastrophe, but fortunately Mr. Zakaria has written a fabulously book to guide us through this pandemic and look forward beyond our current crisis to see what the world may look like afterwards.

Best known for his book The Post-American World and his Sunday international news show on CNN, Mr. Zakaria is the right man to take a global perspective on this pandemic.  But, rather than disprove the central theses of globalization and relative American decline, Mr. Zakaria argues in this book that the pandemic proves both the necessity of globalization and America’s continued to decline.  He even goes beyond that to reveal how important quality government is to daily living, the need for two-way dialogue between experts and average citizens, and the overwhelming necessity for global cooperation.  All of these “lessons” are very well backed up by statistics and figures from an incredibly wide variety of authoritative sources.  And yet, despite all the overwhelming citations, Mr. Zakaria’s writing style is both engaging and easy-to-follow.  Both experts and laymen should be able to pick up this book and learn something.

The only drawback of this book is how outdated some of the information is.  Published in October 2020, some events have accelerated since then.  The COVID vaccine was still in development, though close to completion, when this book went to press and, of course, the 2020 U.S. presidential election and Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol had not  happened yet either.  Though this book in hindsight is quite prescient, I do hope Mr. Zakaria does update this book when it comes out in paperback.

Overall, though only slightly out of date, this is one of the best books to examine these current times and try to project into the future.  Though the pandemic has scarred nearly all of us, this book can help us make sense of this current crisis and what is necessary to build back better in the future.  I highly recommend this book to both policy wonks and laymen alike.

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Dark Messiah: A Review of Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse

Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Over the last few years, fantasy has been moving in a very positive direction with more diverse authors writing from diverse perspectives and backgrounds, thus moving the genre away from the medieval European setting it has been stuck in since J.R.R Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. In the last year, I have read fantasy books from both African and Middle Eastern traditions, but this one is special because Ms. Roanhorse draws on Pre-Colombian Central and South American mythologies (with a bit of Pacific Island folklore thrown in for good measure) to craft a wonderful start to what I believe will be a great fantasy trilogy.

Set in a fantasy world known as the Meridian, which very much echoes the Central American/Caribbean region, this book follows three primary characters.  Xiala is a Teek, a human-mermaid hybrid.  Banished from her homeland for some unknown reason, Xiala takes on a job to take the mysterious blind human named Serapio across the sea to the holy city of Tova.  Meanwhile in Tova, the young religious leader Naranpa sits on a powder keg of a city divided by ancient wounds, discrimination, and political intrigue, which threatens the peace of Tova as well as her own life.  These three characters soon find them on a collision course with destiny and an ancient prophecy.

This is an absolutely wonderful start to what I think will be a great fantasy trilogy.  Each of her characters are unique, damaged, and nuanced in their own way, which makes it easy to invest in their stories.  Though Ms. Roanhorse employs flashbacks throughout the novel to explain some key background, it never feels gimmicky, forced, or disruptive to the overall story.  And the climax is incredible- and incredibly bloody.  The fact that this is set in a fantasy world that is both familiar and different also helps to make this an engaging novel.

This is not a perfect story though.  There are a few things that keep me from giving this a full five stars.  First, there is a slight romance that develops between Xiala and Serapio that feels natural, but it also feels a little sudden at times.  Though Ms. Roanhorse does take time later in the novel to develop their relationship, it does make me wonder how necessary it really was.  Another issue I have is that a fourth POV character, Okoa, is introduced about halfway through the novel.  Though he does play a significant part in events in both the second and third acts, his introduction does feel a little sudden and jammed in.  I wish Ms. Roanhorse had introduced him a little earlier in the novel as his introduction would not have felt so disruptive had she done so.

My biggest gripe though is one that I am noticing in fantasy novels in general, which is that authors seem to be chickening out of killing key characters.  The plot for at least two of the three main characters could have led naturally to their deaths.  And yet both of them end up living by the end, though one is pretty badly injured.  One character’s escape from death felt natural and I am sure will inform some of the plot of the next novel, but the other character’s escape felt a little too convenient.  Perhaps I have been a little too spoiled by George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series and I can understand how authors might want to keep certain characters alive for future use or out of a sense of love, but it always runs the risk of being too convenient or tangling the narrative up in unnecessary explanations.  Though I don’t want to give too much of the narrative away, I believe at least one of our main characters, and the most obvious one at that, should have died at the end of this novel.

That said, this is a truly wonderful start to what I believe will be a great fantasy series.  The world building is great and the characters and plot are highly engaging.  I look forward to reading the next book in this series and I highly recommend this book to fantasy novel fans looking for something new.

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Crying Out for Freedom from the Other Side of American History: A Review of An African American and Latinx History of the United States by Paul Ortiz

An African American and Latinx History of the United States by Paul Ortiz

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

America has a long history of promoting democracy and human rights, but also denying those basic rights to African-Americans and Latinx people. While there are a lot of histories that look at the history of both African-Americans and Latinx people as oppressed groups, nearly all of them treat each group separately. While there is great value in doing so, it does leave out the ways in which both groups supported each other’s fight for freedom and democratic rights and also implicitly perpetuates the false narrative that these two groups’ struggles are distinct from each other. In this incredible examination of American history from the point of view of both groups, Dr. Ortiz links both of their struggles for freedom and shows how America has too often been on the wrong side of history and freedom not just in America, but in its dealings with the Americas too.

As part of Beacon Press’s ReVisioning America series, which also has published such great books as An Indigenous People’s History of the United States and A Queer History of the United States for Young Readers, the goal of this book is to reexamine American history through a different lens.  Too often American history has been filtered through a predominately White POV that emphasizes our country’s many high points while only giving a superficial examination of America’s racist and oppressive past.  Dr. Ortiz tosses that White narrative out the window and focuses instead on the perspective of African-Americans and Latinx people.  The result is not the flattering picture most Americans already know.  African-Americans were enslaved for a good chunk of American history and faced exploitation, legalized segregation, and mass violence after the Civil War.  Latinx people in America, though never enslaved, also were exploited, segregated, and murdered by White Americans too, along with being deported unjustly when labor conditions were poor.  Thus, American history through this perspective is dark, oppressive, and never in keeping with the high ideals we claim to have founded this country on.  

The greatest value of this book though is not in treating African-Americans and Latinx groups as separate, but linking these two groups’ history and showing how each group at their best have supported each other’s struggles for freedom and basic human rights both at home and abroad.  Dr. Ortiz does a fantastic job of cataloging how African-Americans paid attention to and supported the revolutions in the Americas, drawing inspiration from them for their own early freedom struggles.  He also shows how Latinx people abroad supported African-American’s struggles for freedom in Antebellum America.  And once this book moves beyond the Mexican-American War and the Civil War, Dr. Ortiz catalogs the important contributions both groups made to the advancement of civil rights and labor rights in the 20th and 21st centuries.  It is fair to say that without both groups working both separately and together, American history would be tragically different.

Though Dr. Ortiz’s book is great, it is not perfect.  In the first few chapters, the narrative balance between both groups is tilted more towards coverage of African-Americans.  Granted, these chapters deal with pre-Civil War America, so the plight of African-Americans should take center stage at this point.  Also, once we get past the Civil War, Latinx people become a larger part of the narrative and the oppressive system of racial capitalism begins to grind both groups.  Thus, the narrative begins to balance out and Dr. Ortiz’s book starts firing on all cylinders.  Still, I wish he could’ve maintained a better narrative balance from the very beginning.

Too often the voices of African-Americans and Latinx people have been silenced or disbelieved.  The great value of a book like this is that it offers a counter-narrative to the simplistically naive story Americans are used to and acts as a clarion call for America to live up to its highest ideals of liberty and equality for all, as both African-Americans and Latinx people have been demanding from the very beginning.  Americans of all races, colors, and creeds should read this book along with other books in this series, repent, and resolve to justly apply our founding principles to all people in our country and abroad.

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Do Not Throw Away Your Shot: A Review of Furia

Furia by Yamile Saied Méndez

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Life is not always easy on a person’s dreams, especially on a young woman’s dreams in a country where gender equality is not highly valued. In this excellent YA novel, Ms. Méndez perfectly balances drama and romance to tell the tale of a young woman in Argentina pursuing her impossible dream: to become a professional fútbol player.

Camila is a Palestinian-Argentine teen who has been forbidden from playing fútbol (soccer for American audiences) by her mother and abusive father.  But unbeknownst to them, Camila is the star fútbol player on her teen girl’s team known as Furia who has a real shot at going pro.  But things start to get complicated as her older brother’s pro fútbol career continues to thrive and Diego, a local boy who has made a reputation as El Títan in the Italian fútbol league and who has had a crush on Camila since they were kids, comes back home.  As all of these things collide, Camila has to make a choice between her love and her dream.

The first couple of chapters made me a bit concerned.  With all of these multiple narrative threads, it was difficult to figure out where exactly this book was going in the beginning.  I also feared that this book would tip over too much into typical YA romance territory with lots of melodrama.  Fortunately, like her main character, Ms. Méndez knows the story that she wants to tell and begins to thread these multiple plots together brilliantly.  This is not a sappy YA romance, nor does the ending feel like it magically happened.  There are real consequences to Camila’s choices and some of them nearly put her dreams out of reach.

Because there are multiple plot points throughout this novel, some don’t get as much play as I feel they should have.  In particular, Ms. Méndez is able to weave a bit of Argentine politics into this novel.  Argentina’s battle over women’s rights in general and abortion in particular is prevalent in the background of this book and even has a bit of a moment to shine towards the end.  But Ms. Méndez doesn’t go more than skin deep in examining these issues in this novel.  Admittedly, weaving in these kind of gender politics might have dragged the main narrative down, but I personally would not have minded if she had explored it more deeply, in the same way that Angie Thomas explored race issues in The Hate U Give.

Overall, this is a great tale of female empowerment and choosing which dreams to follow.  While it takes a few chapters for things to coalesce, when it does this novel is great.  Whether you are in to YA novels or not, I highly recommend this book to you.

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Deep Crisis: A Review of War on Peace by Ronan Farrow

 

War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence by Ronan Farrow
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Despite its role in shaping the post-war liberal world order, American diplomacy is at a crossroads. With the end of the Cold War, the State Department and its dedicated diplomats have had their work maligned by politicians of both parties and their budgets slashed by a skeptical, even hostile, Congress and Executive branch. The hollowing out of the State Department under Pres. Trump and his two Secretaries of State, Rex Tillerson and Mike Pompeo, is just an acceleration of trends that have been in place for decades now. In this wonderful and critical read, Mr. Farrow use both his own personal experience in the State Department as well as hundreds of interviews, including with all the living Secretaries of State from Henry Kissinger to Rex Tillerson, to chart American diplomacy's declining reliance by policy makers at the highest level. It also charts the disastrous consequences of America's hand over of diplomacy to the military and is a not-so subtle plea for reinvestment in American world leadership and diplomacy.

Before Mr. Farrow was writing articles about Harvey Weinstein's sexual assault allegations that would launch both the #MeToo movement and Mr. Farrow's own reputation into the journalistic stratosphere, he was a young Foreign Service Officer under legendary diplomat Richard Holbrooke, who negotiated the famous Dayton Accords ending the war in Bosnia in the 1990s and died tragically while trying to negotiate an end to the war in Afghanistan under Pres. Obama. The first half of the book is Mr. Farrow's eyewitness account of Mr. Holbrooke's Afghanistan negotiations and its unrealized potential. He makes a compelling case that, had Mr. Holbrooke lived and the Obama administration given more support to his efforts, the U.S. could have negotiated a deal with the Taliban and exited the conflict instead of being militarily bogged down for nearly two decades now. The rest of the book is a charting of how years of budget cuts and neglect has allowed the military to dominate spaces in foreign policy normally reserved for the military and how that has contributed to endless military confrontations and violence. Mr. Farrow also charts how the Trump administration's total lack of interest in diplomacy under Sec. of State Rex Tillerson has accelerated these trends. Though the book was published in 2018 and, thus, does not include Mike Pompeo's tenure nor the Trump administration's overtures to North Korea nor Pres. Trump's withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal has not happened yet, the picture Mr. Farrow paints in this book is one of American diplomacy and world leadership in a state of deep crisis.

This is perhaps one of the best and most accessible books to date on the current state of affairs in American foreign policy. Mr. Farrow's research and interviews are incredibly thorough and he has a journalist's nose for a great story. I greatly enjoyed this book and my only critique is that it needs an updated edition in 2021 now that Joe Biden is the President-elect and the full story of the Trump administration's approach to foreign policy can be fully told. Foreign policy is just one of many areas that need to be rebuilt in the future Biden administration and I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in foreign policy and and America's continued role as a world leader.

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Everything is Better: A Review of Factfulness

Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The news seems to always be filled with bad news. Even without the threat of COVID-19, the news is littered with stories of violence, illness, and death. While this may be a more dramatic story, it unfortunately hides the major story of the last 50+ years: that on nearly every indicator (health, education, the economy, etc.) the world has made an extraordinary amount of progress. Enter Hans Rosling and this wonderful book to correct the misperceptions of the affluent "West".

This book could've easily fallen into a trap of pure humanistic triumphalism, but Mr. Rosling has done more than just list a series of good news items that are routinely missed. He also challenges our preconceived notions about why things are terrible in the world and addresses why we think that way too. At the same time, each chapter is filled with strategies about how one can reorient their mind and try to think of the world both positively and rightly.

This is a wonderful book filled with great charts and figures. A few of them have to be walked through by the author, but once you see where the data is pointing after the first few chapters, it is easier to predict where the other sets of data are pointing. What is most invaluable is how Mr. Rosling tries to make his reader drop the typical "West vs. the Rest" or "Us vs. Them" mentality and instead think of the world as on four different economic levels. This allows one to see the incredible progress the world has made in closing so many gaps on so many levels. Today, most people in the world do not live in extreme poverty, though it still exists. And that brings up another great point about this book, which is Mr. Rosling's use of maxims to illustrate his points. One of his most memorable is to think of the state of the world as "bad, but getting better." It's a little more complicated than that though, but I do not want to spoil anything for you.

One thing I will say about this book is that at times he seems to bash on the media a bit too much. Granted, Mr. Rosling does humbly admit that he is probably too harsh on the media, but it still stands out. Also, this is not a book that I would read alone. This is a book that demands to be read and discussed with other people so that you don't just tuck all these facts away into your brain and carry on. The good news about that though is that this is a very accessible book. Both experts and lay readers should have no problem sifting through the data presented in this book.

Whether you are looking for a respite from all of the doom-and-gloom news about COVID-19 or not, this is a book that you should read to better understand just how much better things are in the world today. I highly recommend this book to all readers, not just those interested in current affairs.

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Crossing Borders for the American Dream: A Review of The Distance Between Us

The Distance Between Us by Reyna Grande

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

For many years now, people have been crossing the U.S.’s southern border, legally or illegally, in search of the American Dream. What is not always mentioned in that tale is how often the children of those who cross the border are left behind for long stretches of time. What does that do to relationships between parents and their children? And what happens when they are reunited? This memoir answers those questions as Ms. Grande chronicles her own life of poverty, abandonment, and abuse from her childhood in Mexico to her graduation from college in California.

The book starts with Ms. Grande’s mother leaving their home in Iguala, Mexico, to join her husband in the United States, “El Otro Lado.” Ms. Grande and her siblings, Mago and Carlos, live a life of poverty with their grandparents and the short spurts when their mother comes back to take care of them. When their long absent father returns and gives them a chance to go to the U.S. with them, they soon find themselves in “El Otro Lado” and given opportunities they never could’ve had in Mexico. However, they soon learn that the father they dreamed of having is nothing like the father they actually have to live with.

This was a very difficult for me to rate because it is so damn depressing. Never before has a book made me want to cry with every chapter. The circumstances that Ms. Grande and her siblings find themselves in just wrenches at your heart and there are very few moments where the mood lightens until the very end. And yet, Ms. Grande’s style is compelling. Her use of rhetorical questions throughout puts you in the mind of a child dealing with abandonment and abuse throughout her young life. It makes the ending of the book very well earned.

This is not a book to lull you to sleep. Indeed, you will want to keep some Kleenex handy for those awful tear-jerking moments, of which there are a lot. This is a book for fans of Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis and other memoirs of poverty.

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Review: How Democracies Die

How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Liberal democracy is far more fragile than most Americans think. It is more likely to deteriorate into dictatorship than stay strong. This is a fact that political scientists have been researching for some time now, but with the election of Donald Trump in 2016, books about this topic with a popular audience in mind have been written, bringing that research to a wider audience. This book is one of most clearly written and readable about how democracies can fall.

Using recent historic examples and easy to understand language, charts, and evidence, Levitsky and Ziblatt show how the soft guardrails of democracy, or democratic norms as they are more commonly known, can be eroded over time and how authoritarian figures can rise to completely subvert the system. But what may be most shocking to Americans is how the authors trace America's own erosion of democratic norms since the late 1970s. As has been said by commentators since 2016, Donald Trump is not the cause of the mess we're in, he is just the result of recent decades of norm destruction by both Republicans and Democrats (though, the authors argue, mostly Republicans). They also show how political leaders can make serious mistakes in evaluating potential authoritarian figures or even ally with them for short-term partisan gain, thus damaging the democratic system in general. For a general audience, it may be shocking just how easy it is for democratic governments to fall.

The main reason for this book to exist is because of Donal Trump's 2016 election. Levitsky and Ziblatt show, convincingly in my opinion, how Pres. Trump matches the profile for a potential authoritarian figure and how his unprecedented administration fits the model of authoritarianism in the making. This makes this book an important read for the present moment, but I suspect that their assault on Pres. Trump means that rank and file Republicans, the ones who need this message the most, will be less likely to read it. It also means that, should the country make it out of this long national nightmare, that this book may not have as much staying power in the minds of the public as it should. Democracy is a fragile system and Americans need to constantly remember just how fragile it is. We need books like this, but I fear that, because it is a book very much of its time and place, it will not stick around in the public mind should Pres. Trump be unelected or removed from office.

Despite its potential lack of staying power, this book is an incredibly important read for our current political times. It also includes some important suggestions throughout about how to keep democracy safe that all Americans, Republicans and Democrats, should take to heart. I highly recommend this to anyone who is worried about the state of politics in America today.

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