Book Reviews

Summary: Approximately 70 years of slavery from the 1870s to the 1940s have largely been unknown or ignored.

Part of what has been vital for me to recognize as I read history is earlier examples of current problems. There may not be a direct connection with those similar issues, but we need to acknowledge that there may be a connection. For example, one of the issues brought up in this book is local control of school funding. Many small government advocates today advocate local school control, which is not bad. However, local control was used to get around rules for disproportionate funding of White and Black schools during the Jim Crow era and beyond. And today, local control is the root of school funding and quality disparities.

Another example is the different sentencing levels of Whites and Blacks (including a higher likelihood of being arrested and charged, more severe charges when charged, and more severe sentences for the exact charges when sentenced). Then, there is the example of Ferguson, Missouri, using fees, primarily enforced against Black residents, to fund city services to lower tax rates.

It is not that there are direct connections between today and earlier in the three examples above, but when there are similar examples, we should investigate whether the issues that gave rise to those similar examples are really similar.

Slavery By Another Name is primarily about the system of convict leasing. Convict leasing was the practice of leasing convicts to private businesses or individuals as laborers. The local or state government then was relieved of the requirements for housing and feeding convicts, made money from those convicts, and could privately fund much of the salaries of law enforcement and the courts through fees instead of taxes.

Much of the work done by convict leasing was dangerous or excessive work. Records were often poor, but in some cases, there was as much as a 30% annual death rate among convicts. Convicts were purchased for $30 to $75, roughly $1000 today, compared to the approximately $1000 purchase cost of slaves a generation earlier (what would be roughly $30,000 today). There was little interest in moderating the effects of work or punishment because of the low investment cost. Working convicts for 20 hours a day, seven days a week, with low rations and high rates of punishment with lash, waterboarding, or hanging by thumbs was common.

The crimes were often minor: swearing in front of a woman, disrespecting someone, leaving an employer without permission, selling goods at night, etc. It was commonly thought at the time that African Americans would only work with the threat and reality of lash and other beating. (The idea of the lazy Black worker continues today but is a derivative of this earlier era.) The descriptions of beatings throughout the book are one of the most complex parts of reading/listening to the book.

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Summary: Graphic adaptation of the best of Octavia Butler’s books.

Over the past couple years I have begun to appreciate the art and promise of the graphic novel. Not as a “˜children’s version’ but as something that can be a true art form to itself. I do not think that John Lewis’ memoir in the March Trilogy would be as good in narrative text. The graphics of the March trilogy were essential to making it so good. But I am not sure that the graphic novel of Kindred is up to that standard.

It is not that Kindred is a bad adaptation or a bad graphic novel. It stayed pretty close to the original in story and I liked the art. But the novel was, in my opinion, the best novel of a very good novelist. Octavia Butler captured not just the horror of slavery for the slave, but the horror of slavery for everyone involved. I think some of the nuance of the novel was (necessarily) lost in the graphic novel adaptation. A graphic novel, even one that is over 200 pages, can’t really tell the same story as a 300 page novel.

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Summary: Several long and short stories that serve as background and a bridge between books 4 and 6 of the Earthsea cycle.

I have not read the later books of Earthsea properly. The first three books I read as a teen multiple times. Then five years ago I picked up Wizard of Earthsea, the first in the series. Which lead me to read the sixth book (The Other Wind) of the series. I thought I had read the fourth book (Tehanu), but I have no record of reading it.

So I am all wrong about reading this series. I have picked up the threads of the story and I think I mostly know what is going on. But if I were recommending it, I would tell you to read the series in order and not spread out by 30 years. (Although it was over 30 year spread from the start to the completion of the series.)

There are six stories here and a description of Earthsea. The stories range from 130 to 25 pages. Not unusually, I liked the longer ones more than the shorter ones. The first two and last I think were the best. Throughout the book there was an exploration of why the wizards were only celibate men. A history that shows that the founding of the school at Roke was not by only celibate men. And the final story is about a woman that comes to the school to learn to be a wizard.

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Summary: How do we understand the relationship of culture to scripture and what in scripture is cultural and what is transcultural?

Several years ago I spent a few months reading widely on hermeneutics, the concept of what it means to read and understand scripture. It wasn’t until I was burned out on hermeneutics that I heard about William Webb’s book Slaves, Women and Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis. I did read his more introductory book on Corporal Punishment and Parenting that was well worth reading about four years ago.

I finally picked up Slaves, Women, & Homosexuals as part of my reading about how different people are approaching homosexuality in the church. I have been roughly alternating books on different positions up until this point, I think the two books that are the best I have read on each side is People to be Loved by Preston Sprinkle and Changing Our Mind by David Gushee, although I think both are far from perfect and neither will change many minds.

Slaves, Women, & Homosexuals is more about culture and hermeneutics than the particular issues of homosexuality and women in the church. The basic project is for Webb to chart out 18 points to evaluate how the church should understand scripture and theology in regard to a cultural issue. He takes these three areas to give illustration to the idea.

First, he assumes that most Christians now agree that slavery is sinful. He charts out this change briefly (Mark Noll’s The Civil War as Theological Crisis does this is greater detail.) But the general assumption is that most readers agree with him on this and he is using slavery as a “neutral” example. Then the other two examples are Women (pro) and Homosexuality (against). For women, Webb is trying to show why egalitarian (men and women are equal in position and calling within the church) or “ultra soft patriarchy” (there is difference in calling, but women and men have equal worth before God) is how we should read scripture now because the patriarchy of scripture was culturally bound. And then he uses homosexuality as his negative example because he believes that celibacy is the only option for Gay Christians and that the proscriptions against homosexuality are transcultural.

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Summary: If you are looking for how to approach Barth, this is your book.

The more you read, the more you realize what you do not know. And one of those things that I do not know enough about is Barth. I started reading Saving Karl Barth: Hans Urs von Bathasar’s Preoccupation by Stephen Long a while ago and I gave up around the 60% mark primarily because I just did not have enough background on either one to really understand what I was reading. I have since read one of von Balthasar’s books and dabbled in two others and attempted a Barth reader that was so badly converted to ebook that it was unreadable.

IVP’s An Explorer’s Guide to Karl Barth by David Guretzki was a good introduction to Barth. I still want to read a good biography and at least one of his books or maybe a reader before I attempt Saving Karl Barth again.

An Explorer’s Guide to Karl Barth is probably going to be read by students most often. It opens with why Barth is important before giving a rough biographical sketch. But most of the book is either a tour of Barth’s theology or a tour of Barth’s books. This is a guide to help you discover Barth for yourself, primarily by helping the reader to see how to approach Barth’s own work and read it yourself.

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Summary: A teen watches her friend get killed by a cop during a traffic stop and her life and the lives of those around her spiral out of control.

The Hate U Give has had a lot of hype. It was nominated for a National Book Award, it won two awards in the Goodreads Readers Choice awards, and Audible.com’s Editor Choice for book of the year among other awards.

One friend on goodreads said she read it with a question about whether The Hate U Give was really a great book or whether it was a book that matters because of the moment. In the end she decided the later and not the former, but I am not sure. It does matter because of the moment. Young adult and other fiction readers are asking for more books by and about people of color. And there is a need for realistic portrayals of difficult ethical situations. But I also think it was well written.

Starr is 16. She lives in Garden Heights, a poor neighborhood of New York City but attends school in a wealthy suburban private school. She lives a double life. Her father is an ex-gang member and black power advocate that is committed to helping people in the neighborhood. Her mother is a nurse, equally committed, but also concerned about the impact of their neighborhood on the lives that her children live.

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Takeaway: Can we really know someone who does not want to be known?

It has been about two decades since I read James McBride’s breakout book about his mother, The Color of Water. Kill ‘Em and Leave is the first book of McBride’s I have read since then. Like Color of Water, McBride is a character in this sort of biography of James Brown. Half of the book is really about how hard it is for anyone, including McBride, to really understand James Brown.

Throughout Kill ‘Em and Leave, McBride recounts his interviews with the people who knew, worked for, loved, and were harmed by James Brown. There is little gloss here. James Brown was a musical genius and a nearly impossible person to be around. Those who stayed with him the longest were those who were willing to do what he said. If you ate with James Brown, you ate what he ate, and only what he ate. If you worked for him, you did what he said. If you played for James Brown, you showed up on time, played what he wanted, and supported Brown as the star.

But McBride also captures the importance of James Brown as a cultural figure for the African American community. There are a ton of stories about children just wanting to see a famous Black man who owned a plane and radio stations and said, “I’m Black, and I’m proud.”

This is important to McBride as well. McBride identifies with Brown in some ways. Kill ‘Em and Leave was partly written because McBride needed to write a book. He was broke after a divorce. He was living in a small NYC apartment. McBride has had big hits, but at 55, he was starting over again, similar to Brown. And McBride has no problem identifying the aspects of Brown’s life that were impacted by racism.

However, the biggest image of Kill ‘Em and Leave was of a man who was unable or unwilling to be known. His best marriage was his first as a young man before becoming a star. But she didn’t want to travel with him and didn’t like his philandering while he was traveling. Their divorce was about their different goals, more than a lack of love, and they stayed close throughout his life. His musicians were around him, and he owed much to their musical influences to his sound. But even those who were around him longest didn’t claim to really know him. Some of them didn’t want to talk about him. Many of them continue to live (or died) in poverty.

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Summary: A view of Christianity as the empowerment of the poor and disenfranchised.

Jesus and the Disinherited has been recommended to me a number of times. This month the kindle edition is on sale for $2.99 and I picked it up. This is a brief book. Just over 100 pages. It famously was carried by Martin Luther King Jr almost everywhere he went as inspiration.

Howard Thurman was a classmate with King Sr and the Dean of the Chapel at Boston University while Martin Luther King Jr was working on his PhD. Jesus and the Disinherited was based on a series of lectures and originally published in 1949. (Before Martin Luther King Jr was at Boston.)

The first chapter of Jesus and the Disinherited is about Jesus and how his role as a member of a minority group and in poverty impacted the message of Jesus. Much of this I have heard others say previously. (I really don’t remember anyone citing Thurman, but based on the date of the book, I know that much of my reading would have been influenced by Thurman without citation.)

What is interesting and a new thought to me in that first chapter is Thurman’s contrast between Jesus and Paul and their different positions in society and how that seems to have impacted their theology. Jesus was poor and outside of Roman society. Paul was a Roman citizen and one that used that status.

Thurman cites Romans 13 and other passages as an example of how Paul’s status as citizen is woven into Paul’s theology. Thurman is clear that Paul also subverts cultural assumption of status in Galatians (neither Jew nor Greek, Male or Female, slave or free). But that Paul does not subvert the system as much as Jesus does.

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