PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewReading the book, one searches for some other emergent nation, one imagined by generations of Black revolutionaries, solid in its constitution and aims: safety, dignity and self-determination for Black people ... The Panther 21 trial is the book’s opening subject, and it sets a standard for drama that seems impossible to sustain. But the cast of characters expands, and somehow each one the reader encounters is as compelling as the last ... This is a dizzying and expansive clan to write about, and the book reflects that dizziness at times. Holley introduces key figures and then returns to them later in ways that sometimes make it difficult to discern how much influence they had on the events discussed ... Not presented as a definitive family biography, yet it succeeds in depicting as revealing and inclusive a portrait of the Shakurs as we have seen. For all the intimacy and richness of detail provided by Holley’s admirable archival work and interviews, there is room for more engagement with the ideas and arguments the Shakurs advanced ... The ideas the Shakurs advanced remain as relevant as ever, but An Amerikan Family offers no romantic assurance that the Shakurs’ legacy in politics or music will live on exactly as they intended. Instead, it provides readers with a visceral and unsanitized account of the Black liberation struggle as a material and often lawless battle between the American government and Black people who refuse to be trampled upon.
Kerri K. Greenidge
RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewAn ambitious book, not only because of its large cast of characters, but because it offers so many insights about racial strife in the United States ... She explores the contradictions of American ideas about freedom, highlighting that among white people, racial progress almost never implies Black self-determination or true equality. And she paints an unsparing portrait of the Black elite ... While all these facets are compelling, the book’s most affecting contribution is Greenidge’s treatment of intergenerational racial trauma ... Greenidge provides a consummate cartography of racial trauma, demonstrating, through an adept use of the family’s letters, diaries and other archival materials, how the physical and emotional abuses of slavery traveled through generations long after abolition ... There is plenty of little-known American history in The Grimkes, but no blow-by-blow accounts of the Civil War, Reconstruction and the other major national events that shaped the family’s evolution. Similarly, while Greenidge provides context for the Grimke sisters’ contributions to abolition and the nascent women’s rights movement, she does not make forceful arguments about how the sisters influenced the trajectory of those movements, or what would have been different without them.
Les Payne and Tamara Payne
RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewReaders may pick up this biography hoping for a celebration of Black pride and resilience in the midst of madness. Payne, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who devoted nearly 30 years to the book before his death in 2018, meets these needs intermittently, but that is not his primary goal. Malcolm’s presence is beautifully rendered, but The Dead Are Arising, which was ultimately completed by Payne’s daughter and principal researcher, Tamara Payne, is not a tribute or enshrinement of achievements. Instead, it reconstructs the conditions and key moments of Malcolm’s life, thanks to hundreds of original interviews with his family, friends, colleagues and adversaries. Nobody has written a more poetic account ... This book reveals more of Malcolm’s childhood than we have ever seen ... One possible criticism is that Payne does not provide an exhaustive account of Malcolm’s political philosophy. The book contains little analysis of Malcolm’s most celebrated speeches, debates or interviews. Instead, Payne most fully presents Malcolm’s ideas in contrast to those of both Muhammad and Martin Luther King Jr. ... we are exposed to Malcolm’s teachings within the rhythm of Payne’s masterly storytelling ... The details of the killing have never been totally clear, but Payne’s narrative is exacting.
Jeffrey C. Stewart
PositiveThe New York Times Book Review\"The breadth of Locke’s work is stunning, and Stewart refuses to emphasize Locke’s activities during the Harlem Renaissance at the expense of other contributions. Locke was never truly revered as a philosopher, but he produced original research in the field of value theory, including, for example, on the role emotions play in the formation of values and opinions … Stewart treats seemingly every sentence Locke wrote with great care, reconstructing his wanderings through Europe and Africa, black theater, communism and other geographic and intellectual terrain. The cost of this choice is the length and pace of the book, which is sharply written but unlikely to get readers’ adrenaline pumping. The benefits of his thoroughness, however, are manifold.\
Lawrence P. Jackson
RaveThe New York Times Book Review...[a] captivating biography ... Himes became a writer while incarcerated. Jackson refuses to romanticize Himes’s life or his motivation for becoming an artist. There is no moral redemption in the transformation Himes undergoes while locked away. Rather, Jackson posits that Himes began writing to work through the trauma of a deadly prison fire that amplified the suffering and shame he had felt since childhood ... Many of the details of Himes’s life appear in other books, but Jackson’s research is unimpeachable. The biography is based on a kaleidoscopic mix of archival materials, close readings of Himes’s published writing and personal letters and conversations with people who knew him. Himes had a mercurial personality and led a thrilling life that might tempt a biographer to conjure a book in the spirit of its subject, but Jackson avoids this pitfall. The book is neatly written and accessible, without cheap tricks to build suspense or sway readers’ opinions ... All told, Chester B. Himes is a bracing journey through the life of an uncompromising writer who considered himself 'an evil, highly sensitive, unsuccessful old man — but … not an American Negro in the usual connotation of the word.'
