PositiveThe Star TribuneMeticulously researched and elegantly written, The Black Cabinet is sprawling and epic, and Watts deftly re-creates whole scenes from archival material. With six main Cabinet characters, several subplots, infighting and at least three presidencies involved, however, it’s a lot to take in ... The book clearly revolves around the larger-than-life Bethune, offering an object lesson on race and political expediency[.]
Jodie Adams Kirshner
MixedThe Star TribuneIn her new book, Broke: Hardship and Resilience in a City of Broken Promises, Jodie Adams Kirshner pulls back the curtain on the Detroit Renaissance to reveal an alternate African-American universe. In the other Detroit, she writes, the overwhelmingly black majority inhabits a city crippled by government dysfunction and pockets of intractable poverty ... An academic and bankruptcy lawyer, Kirshner isn’t a natural storyteller — her prose is a bit stilted, and the book feels overpopulated. Reggie, Charles and Miles, three middle-aged black men fighting destitution and bad luck, blurred together; fewer characters would help readers get to know and care about each one. Ultimately, though, her characters are somewhat secondary to Kirshner’s goal — sounding the alarm about America’s cities
Kiese Laymon
RaveMinneapolis Star Tribune\"The stunning, aptly titled new memoir Heavy — Kiese Laymon\'s sweeping self-exploration about growing up in Mississippi in the 1980s — is a veritable cornucopia of black urban pathologies, set in an impoverished state that\'s become shorthand for American racism ... Although his cinematic journey is propelled by books and writing, a succession of invisible demons lurk at every turn ... Laymon is a gifted wordsmith born and educated in the land of Welty and Faulkner, and his use of language, character and sense of place put Heavy neatly into the storied Southern Gothic canon. Yet the defining elements of his art — cadence, dialogue, eye for detail, mordant wit — are firmly rooted in the African-American experience.\
Henry Louis Gates Jr.
RaveThe Minneapolis Star TribuneGates brings his one-man crusade to a bookstore near you with his new book, 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro. Part Encyclopedia Africana, part advanced black studies course, the book unearths little known, often surprising truths about the complex history of the worldwide black diaspora, serving up a sweeping concept in bite-sized chapters … The overarching theme of 100 Amazing Facts is America’s original sin — slavery — and its not-so-silent partners, rape, rebellion and bloodshed. Gates unflinchingly tells bitter, warts-and-all tales.
Timothy B. Tyson
RaveThe Minneapolis Star TribuneWhat sets Tyson's book apart is the wide-angle lens he uses to examine the lynching, and the ugly parallels between past and present. Emmett, he argues, is the ancestral father of the Black Lives Matter movement, and America, which followed the Obama era with the election of Donald Trump, has steadfastly refused to reject white supremacy, or account for its original sin. Through research and his little-known interview with the late, elderly Carolyn Bryant — the purported 'victim' of the boy's advances — the author sweeps in unsung heroes, puts minor figures in the spotlight, underscores the ground-shaking strength of Emmett's grief-stricken mother and gives depth to familiar villains ... A terrific writer and storyteller, Tyson compels a closer look at a heinous crime and the consequential decisions, large and small, that made it a national issue.
John Edgar Wideman
PositiveThe Minneapolis Star TribuneThrough flashbacks and self-examination, however, Wideman also wrestles with notions of black masculinity, race and justice in America, as well as the bitter truths and consequences of his own abusive, no-account father ... Not surprisingly, the writing in Wideman’s book, which imagines conversations Louis Till might have had and fills in the blanks of his criminal case, is both sublime and familiar ... At the end of the time-travel journey, however, Wideman leaves us with one inescapable conclusion. When it comes to race in America, as the French might say, plus ça change: The more things change, the more they stay the same.
ed. Jesmyn Ward
RaveThe Minneapolis Star TribuneWard’s team delivers the goods, in three sections commenting on the past, current and future states of African-Americans ... The writing is impressive: literary, insightful, urgent, timely, a bracing antiseptic to still open racial wounds ... Fifty-three years, two civil rights movements and one black president after Baldwin’s original, the problem with a book like this is that we still need a book like this.
Ethan Michaeli
RaveThe Minneapolis Star TribuneMichaeli’s documentary-style prose lays out an obituary of sorts for the black press, a once mighty but now nearly defunct institution that fought for equality and made U.S. history along with recording it.
Damon Tweedy
PanThe Minneapolis Star TribuneTweedy’s prose isn’t dull, but it’s not flashy, either; readers shouldn’t expect drama ripped from an episode of Grey’s Anatomy, and his self-reflection can get a bit distracting. He does, however, make a powerful case on how, in the era of Obamacare and the nation’s first black president, race can still determine who gets sick and lives, or dies.
