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We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy
We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy
Ta-Nehisi Coates | 2017 | Essays, History & Politics
9
9.5 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
An honest look at the Obama years
The simplest way to describe "We Were Eight Years in Power" is as a selection of Ta-Nehisi Coates' most influential pieces from The Atlantic, organised chronologically. The book is actually far more than that, establishing Coates as the pre-eminent black public intellectual of his generation.

Coates is one of the first to show up to discuss all three contemporary themes: the man, the community, national identity. He critiques respectability politics. He writes about mass incarceration. He writes about Michelle Obama and Chicago's South Side. He writes about how Barack Obama was exceptional, in many senses, and about the paradoxical limits of the first black president's power to address race and racism. He writes about the qualitative difference between white economic prospects and black economic prospects, thanks to discriminatory policies promulgated by the government even during progressive times, and about how, in his view, reparations would be the only way to redress the problem.

An air of resignation begins to bleed into Coates' writing even before his last essay, coming into the final years of the Obama administration. It is an eloquent eulogy to the struggles that African Americans are facing and increasingly fearing today.
  
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The Vanishing Half
The Vanishing Half
Brit Bennett | 2020 | Fiction & Poetry
10
9.0 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
I read The Mothers, Brit Bennett’s first book, and loved it. So when this popped up on NetGalley, I knew I had to request it, and I was so pleased when I was given the opportunity to read it.

It’s a story about secrets, lies and reinvention - the sacrifices someone has to make in order to get the life they want. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

Stella and Desirée Vignes are identical twin sisters, brought up in a small southern town, where all the inhabitants are black people who could pass for white people if they wanted to (which a very dangerous thing to try and do at the time the story is set).

The twins escape together, and then Stella leaves Desirée. Stella discovers that she can pass as white, and marries a wealthy white man, who knows nothing of her origins. Desirée marries a black man who beats her, and so she escapes back to her mother with her dark skinned daughter, Jude. Jude is never accepted in Desirée’s home town of Mallard, and so she leaves to go to university as soon as she is able to.

This is where Jude’s life unwittingly intersects with that of Stella’s daughter, and secrets that have been kept for so long, are brought out into the open.

I loved everything about this book. The characters and their motivations, the storyline, the way the book was written - everything! I could see why Stella did what she did, and how she felt trapped by her choices, and it’s a great example of how prejudice and racism works in the USA - and potentially here in the UK as well.

I really do highly recommend this book. It’s such a great story that kept me engaged from start to finish. I have to admit to reading it slower to make it last longer - it’s a book that I’ll be recommending to my friends, that’s for sure!
  
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Alex Trybus (79 KP) rated White Noise by PVRIS in Music

Feb 2, 2018  
White Noise by PVRIS
White Noise by PVRIS
2014 | Rock
10
10.0 (1 Ratings)
Album Rating
Constant theme of black, white, and smoke. I admire that consistency. (0 more)
Nothing but love for PVRIS and this album
I almost have no words for this review... I adore everything about Lynn (the lead singer) and PVRIS. I have been listening to them for quite some time now, and this particular album will always hold still in my heart. St. Patrick makes me scream, You and I makes me cry, and I can easily sing along and dance to all the other songs. I had the pleasure of seeing most of these songs live in Philadelphia this past October and I can honestly say that I cried. It was such a surreal experience, and the music sounds exactly the same live (if not better) than recorded on the album. I adore everything about it.