RaveThe Washington PostBy turns trenchant, painful and amusing, Sarsour’s memoir is packed with hard-learned lessons from the front lines of the social-justice struggle. It’s a book that speaks to our times, tackling issues of racial injustice, economic inequality, criminal justice reform, the surveilling of Muslim communities and the shortcomings of white feminism. Its strength lies in its discussion of intersectional activism as an answer to the rise of the illiberal far right, with well-documented examples of how intersectionality has served to bring about real change ... We Are Not Here to Be Bystanders is a tribute to the tenacity and fearlessness needed to stand against injustice.
G. Willow Wilson
RaveTor.comDespite its enchanting otherworldly trappings, it is primarily a novel of ideas. It grapples with who we are, how we love, why we worship, and why a world of co-existence—perhaps even of Convivencia—seems so far beyond our reach ... prose so vivid and original that one can only read it with envy.
Thrity Umrigar
PositiveThe Washington PostIn thescenes between Anton and his politically astute girlfriend, Carine, the treatment of race is problematic. Anton seems strangely detached from the reality of pervasive anti-blackness. Carine’s attempts to educate Anton result in a break between them, though she is later willing to mentor Anton on his black identity — mothering him with the freedom Juanita was denied. On the other hand, the reality that Umrigar constructs for Juanita suggests the author appreciates how inescapable systemic racism is, though the consequences of Coleman’s actions are disposed of too neatly. No matter what Anton achieves, he can’t insulate himself from his blackness. Whether on Georgia’s rural roads where he is stopped by police, or in the heart of major urban centers, or within the judicial system, he is never immune from that reality — or what it means in America. The tender, final scenes of the book describe a man beginning to come to terms with who he is.
C. B. George
PositiveThe Washington Post...[a] cleverly plotted, suspenseful new novel ... The Death of Rex Nhongo paints a somber picture of the minor degradations and inarticulate sorrows of married life. Everyone in the story attempts to pass on risk to everyone else. The gun left in Patson’s taxi is a deadly piece of evidence, implicating and endangering anyone who comes across it. Through the author’s careful crafting of plausible scenarios, we understand the gun may fall into anyone’s possession at any moment — through loose talk, as a means of defense, by the deliberate attempt to trace it or simply through the random vagaries of life.
