Book review: When People Were Things, by Lisa Waller Rogers

If I could give six stars to this remarkable text, I would. The author has written an engaging, thorough, and minutely researched chronicle of the fight to grant emancipation to the enslaved population in mid nineteenth century America. Full of quoted primary source material in the form of letters, newspaper articles, diaries, and other authentic pieces of history, yet the writing never wavers, is never disparate, and is always coherent, careful, and logically set down in a chronology that reads like fiction but is underscored with truth straight from the pages written by actual participants in the struggle. Gripping and marvelously detailed, the characters become as alive and vibrant as close friends and neighbors, yet authenticity is woven through every narrative, every description, indeed every detail of the story. In this, we can see the lives of everyday people, politicians, journalists, publishers, writers, and others who were affected by the enforced servitude of millions, both Black and white, and how they either rose to the occasion, or absolutely did not, with sometimes complicated and astonishing results. The voices and faces of the enslaved themselves weave in and out among the text, providing important details that have been buried in old newspapers, court cases, and family records, bringing these forgotten individuals to life. And unfortunately, as the book progresses, those who argued against, and even violently fought against emancipation paint a picture that is eerily similar to racist actions and arguments heard today - proving the systemic problem of our democracy still pervades our politics. It’s all too clear that we still haven’t learned these lessons.

Thanks to NetGalley and Barrel Cactus Press for the opportunity to read an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

Originally posted at NetGalley

Book Review: Crudo, by Olivia Laing

 

Oof.

Two things. Two things you have to know about this book, before you get very far into it:
1. Kathy is dead. She never saw 2017, she died in the 90s.
2. Kathy wrote a lot of prose using cut-outs from other people's works. There is an index in the back of the book, it contains pertinent references from Kathy's, and other people's, actual writings. It helps if you look at it from time to time.

Kathy Acker was a punk poet, an author of stream of consciousness observations and diatribes about what was and longing for what could have been, but usually was not. To reimagine her writing in response to Twitter feeds and everyday occurrences and uncommon stupidity like the Trump presidency and Brexit is simply brilliant. But you have to know what youre getting into, you cant be ignorant of this woman and try to wend your way thru this book. It just won't work.

That said, the book is brilliant. It's raw and edgy, sure, but it also glitters with almost tactile vibrancy.

"Just let me learn that love is more than me."

"But all the distances had grown in the last year. The feeling of foreignness blew around the carriage. She liked the man, she smiled at him as they left. You make divisions between people, countries, races, and out of the gaps the warheads emerge."

So many times during this short, half-day read one must lay the work down, close one's eyes, and just breathe. Remembering, how 2017 was so long ago, and we thought it so hard, so strange, so downright *wrong.*

And yet, we knew nothing. We had no idea of the horrible ride we were in for.

But Kathy knew. Like Van Gogh, she says: he knew. And so did she.

Ghostlike, wraithlike, bright shadows on the wall of her home, she moves down the hall of that confused, painful time, cracking wise ass asides, drunk, self-medicated, missing nothing.

And she reminds us of her time, the 80s, and earlier, when people knew things were bad, when AIDS and the threat of nuclear war permeated everyone's consciousness, and as horrifying as things were then we had no idea how bad things would eventually be. The genius of Laing in using Acker's voice and style of writing about the first Trump year is breathtaking. It leaves me mostly wordless, it is impossible to say anything adequate to the purpose.

"I who would have and would be a pirate: I cannot. I who live in my mind which is my imagination as everything -- wanderer adventurer fighter Commander-in-Chief of Allied Forces -- I am nothing in these times."

"Love is the world, pain is the world."

Ah, I cannot.

Originally posted at The StoryGraph