RaveWashington PostEmily Bingham’s new book offers a powerful story of how, exactly, we fool ourselves into thinking the past is past ... Bingham has given us an account that is both riveting and thorough, taking us across a century of spinout marketing campaigns, protests and versions that emerged from Foster’s lyrics ... Before Bingham’s done, she will argue with powerful momentum that the song \'is a spy hole into one of America’s deftest and most destructive creations: the \"singing enslaved person\" whose song assured hearers that the plantation was happy and a place where Black people belong\' ... People who are devoted to provocative hot takes will probably accuse Bingham of canceling a standard perceived to be an anthem for the American Dream. But Bingham’s research is finely detailed, extensive, complex. Further, her identity — and its many complications — is vital to her authority as a needed writer of this book ... What makes us so afraid to learn? What makes a person, a family, a country afraid of veracity? Emily Bingham’s new book is a work toward truth and reconciliation ... Ignorance, she intimates, is not an option for the patriotic.
