His book is electric, because it is so well reported, so plainly told and so evidently the work of a man who has not grown a callus on his heart ... Mr. Lowery’s book is valuable for many reasons. He circles slowly and warily around the question of why, during Barack Obama’s presidency, so little has seemed to improve on the racial front ... Mr. Lowery collected hundreds of interviews for this book, and he recounts his visits to many cities to cover shootings. But his book never reads like a data dump. It has a warm, human tone.
...[an] insightful and unnerving inspection of the police and vigilante killings of black Americans since [Trayvon] Martin ... But the book is much more than a compilation of obituaries. Lowery draws crucial connections between the 'centuries-long assault of the black body,' and contemporary black massacre. He turns a critical eye toward journalists who congratulate themselves for orchestrating social justice movements, while conflating peaceful protesters with vandals and looters in their reporting. He deftly discredits the 'black-and-white binary of good guys and bad guys,' and exposes the power of public relations.
The solemn march from death to protest, from another death to another protest, from racist outburst to protest again, forces the reader to live in the feedback loop of the black psyche, as each horrific milestone produces momentary outrage but seemingly little more ... offers a window onto the journalistic process, and the countervailing pressures to tell an important and awful story fairly ... Lowery is a skillful reporter and storyteller. He takes the reader through the laborious task of reportage with a humanity and forthrightness, making this book more than just a catalog of tragedy.
The most eloquent passages in They Can't Kill Us All come when Lowery reveals the emotional cost paid by those who write the first draft of history, especially when the writers are journalists of color ... As the leader-full (as opposed to leaderless) movement for black lives matures, readers can only hope Lowery will be there to bear witness.
...documents, with refreshing candor and vulnerability, his efforts to balance life and work, ambition and compassion. Much of the ground Lowery covers is familiar to us by now. But his reflections, observations and personal dilemmas offer a glimpse behind the scenes ... What Lowery does not give as much attention to is the underlying economic hardship in black communities that sets the stage for police violence ... Overall, this is a beautifully written reporter’s journal that offers an overview of an important chapter in 21st-century African American history.
Lowery’s book therefore tries to offer a corrective: Movements often have many different origin stories, and his careful behind-the-scenes reporting offers insight into how the various grassroots campaigns converged into what is now often referred to as a single protest movement. He also wants us to discard whatever preconceived notions we have about Black Lives Matter and learn about the nuances and complexities involved in the making of a movement ... The book tells a bleak story, but Lowery concludes on a relatively optimistic note. Although the nation’s future looks uncertain and there is much work left to do, in the end, he insists, both the rallying cry and the activism of Black Lives Matter will endure ... As we settle into the next four years of Trump’s presidency, it’s hard to embrace fully Lowery’s sense of hope and possibility. But the quiet optimism underlying his book is itself an act of protest in our dark times.
Lowery can get lost in the minutiae of those separate stories. He occasionally repeats himself. And his transitions can be disjointed – a consequence, I suspect, of wanting to include too much, and too many names, in this relatively brief account. For all that, I highly recommend his book, and not just because the story he tells about why black lives should matter – and, in America, often don’t – can’t ever be heard often enough. What makes They Can’t Kill Us All more than a ripped-from-the-headlines chronicle is Lowery’s combination of solid reporting, emotional commitment to his story as a black man and a reflective turn of mind.
...a vivid timeline of the movement from its origins to present day. And Lowery allows the voices of the new generation of activists, who have democratized reporting on unrest through real-time social media updates, to tell their stories ... Lowery’s clear-eyed reporting is exceeded only by his thoughtful, sharp sentences. He allows pain to seep into the prose, not hiding the anguish of a black man reporting on so much black death while pointing out connections that can’t be ignored.
...the book ought to be read as a primer about the many granular challenges involved in doing journalism today ... I suspect They Can't Kill Us All won't satisfy those readers who would like to see journalism occupy a separate, inviolate sphere, uninfluenced by technology, social pressure or even simple physical exhaustion. But for the more realistic among us, They Can't Kill Us All is a valuable testament to just how enmeshed journalism is in our civic fabric.
Lowery zigzags from Ferguson, to Cleveland, to Charleston and New York City in an effort to create a backdrop that captures the riots, the grief, the tear gas and the emotional upheaval in places around the country that became markers of modern-day lynchings in near lockstep ... At its best, They Can’t Kill Us All reads like the (often messy) anatomy of a national uprising in the wake of extraordinary black pain ... While stunning in the blunt gravity of facts regarding the killings of innocent black boys and men by police, the book only adds texture and nuance to this narrative if you haven’t been paying attention ... He seems as lost in the mayhem of black death, police violence and the legacy of virulent racism as both the people on the ground and those of us reading through these pages. Maybe that’s the point. It’s about the emotional mayhem.
...through its methodical journalism, Lowery’s book strives to be a type of hedge against the out-of-hand dismissal by non-blacks of 'black communities’ reality' ... They Can’t Kill Us All brings much-needed attention to the blunt alignment of a 'post-racial,' two-term Obama presidency with the scandal of its void on issues of police brutality and misconduct. Lowery’s survey of the presidential rhetoric in such matters can’t help but paint an astonishing picture of executive denial and self-banishment to ideological impotence ... even as his bearing witness to these several years of terror is laudable, the bearing of his bearing witness presents an unapt faith in a false evenhandedness...In misrepresenting the history of so-called race riots in the United States, Lowery primes himself to misapprehend where our focal point — or, rather, focal points — should and shouldn’t rest for interpreting the events of here and now ... Were Lowery to get beyond the false fairness he strikes throughout his book, he would be able to better identify these events for what they are and to get at the greater story which his perpetual deferral of their synthesis substantially evades.
