CBR11Bingo – True Story
This is book is both a lot of what I thought it would be and a little surprising in other ways. I initially avoided it, not because I didn’t think it would be good, but because I am not always ready to dive into a book in which my privilege and place in the world are actively interrogated. But once I got going, I was interested in the ways in which this book is a full-throated defense of existing and being alive, and certainly an indictment of white supremacy, but so actively engaged in love and confidence and self-respect that it never feels nearly as indicting as other books I have read. This is not a criticism or a limitation of the book, but an analysis of its place in the history of polemical memoirs.
It’s also a lot more “memoir”y than I thought it was going to be. I had figured with the title as it is, it was more going to be a collective memoir of the movement itself. It’s a lot more personal than that. And through this personal story there is still the critical analysis of white supremacy and the concept of Black Lives Matter.
So the title of this post is the absolute most important pull-quote from this book. This is very powerful and good in almost all ways, but it ultimately suffers from an issue that most memoirs written by, let’s say, non-memoir writers do. It includes too much story that is true to the writer, but not necessarily germane to the book and potentially waters down the book. This is a minor problem and only really happens in the less-considered romantic elements of the story. These are interesting, but haven’t been as carefully situated in the book as much as the other parts.
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/When-They-Call-You-Terrorist/dp/1250171083/ref=sr_1_1?crid=17R9RGVXQGW5I&keywords=when+they+call+you+a+terrorist&qid=1563195685&s=gateway&sprefix=when+they+call+%2Caps%2C229&sr=8-1)
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