Category: Book/Video Reviews

  • The Pain of Passing Reviews in American History Volume 44, Number 2, June 2016 pages 264-269 DOI: 10.1353/rah.2016.0028 Renee Romano, Professor of History, Africana Studies, and Comparative American Studies Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio Allyson Hobbs. A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2014. 382 pp. Figures,…

  • Racial Ambiguity in Asian American Culture by Jennifer Ann Ho (review) American Studies Volume 55, Number 1, 2016 pages 165-166 DOI: 10.1353/ams.2016.006 Jeehyun Lim, Assistant Professor of English Denison University, Granville, Ohio Racial Ambiguity in Asian American Culture. By Jennifer Ann Ho. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. 2015. Jennifer Ho’s Racial Ambiguity in Asian…

  • “Free State of Jones” is the film Reconstruction historians have been waiting for. Reconstruction, which encompassed the decade following the Civil War, is perhaps the most overlooked era in American history. It is the only period that doesn’t have a National Park Service site commemorating it.

  • The Agonizing Collision Of Love And Slavery In ‘Thomas Jefferson’ Book Reviews National Public Radio 2016-04-06 Jean Zimmerman Did Thomas Jefferson dream of his enslaved concubine, Sally Hemings? No one knows. Jefferson himself never wrote a word about his constant companion of almost 40 years. But author Stephen O’Connor gives us a brave and wondrous…

  • White Savior, Rape and Romance? The New York Times 2016-06-27 Charles M. Blow The movie “Free State of Jones” certainly doesn’t lack in ambition — it sprawls so that it feels like several films stitched together — but I still found it woefully lacking. The story itself is quite interesting. It’s about Newton Knight, a…

  • Free State of Jones: The Incredible True Story of Newton Knight and His Private Rebellion Against the Confederacy People Magazine 2016-06-24 Michael Miller Free State of Jones brings to life one of the Civil War’s most extraordinary and counterintuitive episodes, in which a Confederate deserter overthrew his former commanders and established a free “state” in…

  • Matthew McConaughey Can’t Stop Being a Badass White Savior in The Free State of Jones The Stranger 2016-06-22 Ijeoma Oluo Watch the magical negroes heal Matthew McConaughey from his wounds that he received while badassing his way into exile. Ever since the end of the first season of True Detective I’ve really been wanting more…

  • Review: Matthew McConaughey Rebels Against Rebels in ‘Free State of Jones’ The New York Times 2016-06-23 A. O. Scott, Film Critic Matthew McConaughey, left, and Jacob Lofland in “Free State of Jones.” Credit Murray Close/STX Entertainment “Free State of Jones” begins on the battlefield, with a flurry of the kind of immersive combat action that…

  • Blacks & Jews Entangled The New York Review of Books 2016-07-14 Darryl Pinckney Oreo by Fran Ross, with a foreword by Danzy Senna and an afterword by Harryette Mullen, New Directions, 230 pp., $14.95 (paper) Google wasn’t around when Oreo was first published in 1974. You are hit with Greek mythology and Yiddish right away…

  • On The Free State Of Jones The Huffington Post 2016-06-20 Steven Hahn, Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor of History University of Pennsylvania Three quarters of a century ago, “Gone with the Wind,” a film that mythologized an Old South of wealthy planters and obedient slaves, premiered in Atlanta amidst great fanfare and public…