Elizabeth

Deeply moving

Revisado: 11-03-23

Jamie Spears and his goons should be jailed.

Dear Britney, "May the road rise up to meet you.

May the wind be always at your back.

May the sun shine warm upon your face..."

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Emotionally honest, deeply moving.

Revisado: 03-08-23

Emotionally honest, deeply moving.

Delivered with uncommon honesty, SPARE is a raw and tender share from a man whose lives an extraordinary life that is grounded in the most relatable and universal experiences: loss of a parent, a childhood rife with silent trauma, rifts in families that threatens to tear loved ones apart, and above all, love.

Couldn't stop listening. Highly recommend.

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A radical plan for Black liberation

Revisado: 01-27-21

Recent waves of anti-racist literature have done much to educate the public at large about the evils of White supremacy and the tenacious and deadly fact of systemic racism. Still, far less has been said of a concrete and visionary action plan designed to bring about the kind of lasting economic, social and political equity eluding the United States from the time of its founding.

In THE DEVIL YOU KNOW, Blow rises to the occasion, offering up a most radical plan for Black liberation. Blow calls on Black Americans to embark on a "reverse Great Migration," to move, en masse, away from big destination cities such as New York and Chicago (among others), and into the Southern municipalities that so many Black Americans once called home. A return back to regions once teeming with unbroken generations of vibrant Black communities, ones shaped by Black culture and Black pride - before inhabitants were forced to abandon their hometowns, either in search of work up North – or else as refugees of White terrorism.

Blow's call-to-action is practical as much as it is audacious. Chapter-by-chapter, Blow illustrates how organized Black populations hold the power to systematically target regions throughout the Southern United States for relocation – a demographic shift that, as it were, is already underway – so that they may “fan out like jewels along a necklace” to achieve the population density required for true political power.

But, one might ask, does this suggestion represent an wholesale abandonment of cross-racial equity building? In Blow’s vision, exactly what-in-the-Robin-Diangelo is a White Ally to do?

There may in fact be a clear answer to that question, but Blow does not waste a minute hashing it out. Instead, he highlights the insidious danger of overreliance on White allyship as a means to the socio-political change required to put an end (finally) to the promise of early death that hangs every day over the heads of Black Americans – a fact determined more than anything else, by race.

In particular, Blow expresses healthy skepticism for the zeal of multi-racial mass protests newly popularized in 2020, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. Protests in which Black Americans exercise a form of “direct democracy” in their right to assemble, side-by-side with White liberal allies who, once the protest is over, retreat back to the comforts of their lives, wearing “$80 yoga pants, carrying their lattes.”

In this way, Blow’s argument flies in the face of more popular and palatable sentiments of coalition building and “coming together” across racial lines as a viable means to change. Instead, Blow draws a Mason-Dixon sized line of demarcation between two forms of democracy to be pursued by Black Americans: that of the “direct democracy” exercised in large public protests, and that of “representative democracy,” in which Black people access the means to self-determination by filling seats in political office. That is, filling local government and the House and Senate alike, with Black people, by Black people, who will work on behalf of Black people.

Blow takes great care to clarify: this is not about creating Black domination. Rather, it is about upending White domination. It is about the pursuit of true, long-term, structural equity –something possible only through representative democracy.

Blow’s words read with a tender urgency, and they are directed right to Black Americans –a kind of, hand-over-the-author’s-heart, extended to his people, seeming to say, “let’s get moving”.

He invites Black Americans to see the South as the origin of their collective social and political identity – a birthright of sorts. To recall its warmth, and to return to it - together.

Blow reminds his readers, Black Americans have done this before, “produced collective action”. The time has arrived to do it again.

“The only thing Black people have to do is come home.”

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esto le resultó útil a 15 personas

FINALLY, an author comes along and NAILS it!

Revisado: 01-20-20

I'm a mother of 2, married to a progressive husband who, in so many ways, is my very best friend. Before we had children, we knew one another for well over a decade and I would have insisted on his being a feminist and egalitarian thinker. Again, before we had children. Then, somehow, little by little and, then, all at once, the lion's share of domestic labor fell into my lap. Not only the obvious stuff like childcare. Something more insidious set in, as my head filled with mental lists, the work of "noticing" detailed necessities around the household, a kind of air-traffic-control of domestic details swirling around my head, daily. The laundry, replenishing groceries, responding to bday party RSVP's, clipping toe nails, brushing teeth, all of the things, that, taken together, add up to our children's quality of life.

In short, responsibility for the standards we live in, they fell on me. The cost has been my freedom, and the effect--as Ms. Lockman puts it--is my shocking new status as second class citizen in my own home.

Not to mention, similar to Ms. Lockman, I never saw it coming.

Before I read this book, I could never seem to locate any articles, parenting blogs, FB posts, academic articles or anything that would describe so precisely the nuances of this horrendous cycle. Always, the writing seemed to fall short, misidentifying the central role that men play in generating the problem. Failing to identify it as their issue before it spills over to become a dynamic matter, between us.

Then I picked up ALL THE RAGE, and Ms. Lockman finally, FINALLY spoke to the sophisticated presentation of this issue, of supposedly 'progressive' men who seem entirely unaware that their ideas of equality do more to change their perceptions of themselves than they do to actually change their day-to-day behavior.

ALL THE RAGE gets to the heart of the matter: casting aside comparisons between modern day progressive men vs the Don Draper dads of the past, instead directing our attention where it truly belongs: an unapologetic, side-by-side comparison of the workload **between fathers and mothers**. Are men allowed to get away with doing less--at the expense of their partners? THAT is the question. Period. Point blank. And, if so, then why?

Ms. Lockman draws upon history and social science research, but her focus is squarely on the personal. So accurate are her nuanced descriptions of these every day inequities, I felt she was with me in my home, observing and writing about the most complicated and confusing points of tension between my husband and I, as we struggle to reconcile who we thought we would be as parents with who we really are. The takeaways are validating, heartbreaking and enraging all the at once.

Brava! Thank you Ms. Lockman, for directing the conversation where it truly belongs, finally.

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esto le resultó útil a 2 personas

Gorgeous gem of a book

Revisado: 03-08-15

I could listen to Maya Angelou tells stories forever. I wish I had 50 books of hers just like this. Loved it.

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