Review by Booklist Review
Coates presents three blazing essays on race, moral complicity, and a storyteller's responsibility to the truth. Coates evokes his father's struggle with the wretched narrative legacy of Jim Crow. He travels to South Carolina, where school districts seek to ban his work for suggesting that America was "fundamentally racist," or any other "divisive concept." Coates concludes that "it is neither 'anguish' nor 'discomfort' that these people were trying to prohibit. It was enlightenment." Finally, he connects the dots between the self-justifying narratives of European and American racism and Palestinian oppression in Israel. Going to Palestine is like time traveling back to Jim Crow: IDF soldiers with "sun glinting off their shades like Georgia sheriffs" harass Palestinians at checkpoints, proving that "as sure as my ancestors were born into a country where none of them was the equal of any white man, Israel was revealing itself to be a country where no Palestinian is ever the equal of any Jewish person anywhere." Dehumanization is essential to exploitation, whether the targets are serfs in medieval Europe, African slaves and their descendants in America, or Palestinians on the West Bank. Coates exhorts readers, including students, parents, educators, and journalists, to challenge conventional narratives that can be used to justify ethnic cleansing or camouflage racist policing. Brilliant and timely.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Best-selling Coates is a prominent public thinker and these essays about racism and censorship will spark avid attention and debate.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
