Stakes Is High

Starred review from June 8, 2020
Journalist Smith (Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching) addresses familiar topics through a fresh lens in these searing essays. Contending that the divisions and inequities of the Trump era are “not an aberration,” Smith analyzes recent events including Colin Kaepernick’s national anthem protest, Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s political rise, as well as historical antecedents. He laments that his great-great-great grandfather, who was born into slavery in 1836, was prohibited by North Carolina law from learning to read and write, and therefore “left no record of his internal life.” Taking up the issue of police brutality, Smith notes that when the first modern police force was founded in 19th-century London, its main functions included guarding private property and putting down labor strikes, and that policing in the American South involved forestalling slave rebellions. “White supremacist heteropatriarchal capitalism” brought America to its current state, argues Smith, who also puts the matter in more graphic terms: “Pimping (not sex work) is capitalism in its purest form.” Infused with righteous indignation and astute observation, this is a must-read progressive polemic. Agent: Jessica Papin, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret.

July 15, 2020
A young Black man surveys the landscape and finds America a poisonous, broken place--but perhaps not irretrievably so. Toward the end of his second book, Smith asks an arresting question: "Is the potential for the American Dream worth enduring the brutality of American life?" Anyone who has followed the headlines recently knows that life for African Americans is fraught with peril, the American dream ever more distant. This dangerous moment in history, writes the author, is "not an aberration...it is the course this country has always been on." Exponents of "Afro-pessimism," such as Frank Wilderson III, have expressed considerable--and well-placed--doubt as to whether things can ever get better, though Smith sees a flicker of hope and closes with guarded optimism: "Imagining where we want to go teaches us how to get there. No one ever said it would be simple, only that it is possible." Meanwhile, there are the present realities to consider, some of them embodied in the person of Donald Trump, whom Smith considers absolutely the wrong person to be in office, if one who represents a logical point on a continuum of racism and reaction. The right New Yorker for the job, he writes, was Shirley Chisholm, who is coming in for fresh appreciation half a century after her run for office. Even so, "Chisholm was never going to be elected president. Donald Trump was inevitable." Yet she was a serious candidate, just as Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez is serious--though, Smith counsels, what is more important is that the many people out there who are of like mind be encouraged to bring democratic socialism into office. The author is sharply self-aware ("Sometimes, reader, I write 'you' when I'm too afraid to admit my own failures"), and he would seem to expect his reader to approach his fine-honed argument with the same seriousness. Doing so is well worth the effort. An urgent and provocative work that deserves the broadest possible audience.

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Starred review from August 1, 2020
Journalist Smith (Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching, 2016) takes on the failure and possibility of the American dream in this slim, impactful book. While Stakes Is High begins with Donald Trump's election, Smith makes it clear that Trump is a symptom of a bigger disease: the belief in an America whose ideals set it apart from other countries, an America in which hard work ensures success, an America that offers liberty and justice for all. As Americans, Smith writes, we are eager . . . to believe the most flattering narratives about ourselves. But the truth is darker. The American dream takes inequality as its central premise, a baseline state of being that hard workers may aspire to rise above. That the country betrays this premise?through over-policing in Black neighborhoods, gendered violence, and environmental racism, to name a few ways?is almost beside the point, when the starting premise is already predicated on inequality. Stakes Is High is a polemic in the best sense of the word, holding up a mirror to America in the hope that a clear-eyed glimpse of its failings will assist in the never-ending struggle to bring about the righteous nation it has always aspired to be.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

August 1, 2019

Smith follows up the New York Times best-selling Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching: A Young Black Man's Education, an impressive debut title, by expanding his aim to include educating all of us. Tops on his list in a book of wide-ranging, interlinked essays: a look at how white America prefers its mythologies to actual history, and how that affects everyone. With a 40,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2020

Choosing a president does not excuse one from democratic duties, argues Smith (Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching) in this latest work. This political examination employs the tools of memoir to make a powerful entry into the post-Trump discussion. In a much-needed dissection of the continuous "unwinding" of the United States, Smith argues that the nation has never been united, and that the hideousness of this moment has been long brewing. He bridges contemporary political discussions with an eagle-eyed examination of history to dissect people's mounting disillusionment. Central to the national delusion as he sees it is the question of what is political. "Pickup trucks and oak trees are apolitical only if no one you have ever loved has had their body dragged behind one or hanged from the other." Years and years of "depoliticization" have obfuscated the violent means by which our government has enriched white people and oppressed poor people of color, he maintains. While the book is centered on racial inequalities, Smith also looks at gender and the Me Too movement. VERDICT This is not always easy book, but it is one that sees the United States for what it is. A searing combination of memoir and commentary that makes for essential reading.--Sierra Dickey, Brattleboro, VT

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.