Tag: history

Never Caught

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Plot:

We all know of George Washington. He’s an American hero. What we don’t talk about as often is the fact that he owned hundreds of slaves. Ona Judge was technically the property of his wife, Martha Washington. When George and Martha moved to Philadelphia to begin their reign as America’s first family, Ona was one of the slaves they took with them. And at age 20, she successfully escaped from the Washington household. Never Caught is the story of the Washingtons, their human property, and their pursuit of one woman determined to live in freedom.

What I loved most:

American history is messy. George Washington helped found this country that is built on the concepts of freedom and all people being equal – and he also owned hundreds of slaves. Both of these things are true. This is the kind of history that you’re not taught in school (or at least the kind of history that I wasn’t taught in school), but if we’re truly committed to loving America and making this country the best that it can be, we absolutely have to explore our history in its entirety. Ignoring the evil in our past doesn’t make it any less real. Never Caught shares an eye-opening, brutal story that I’ll forever be mad about. This is an important read, y’all.

Read this book if you like:

History, biographies, unlearning and relearning, Black history month

Book details:

  • Author: Erica Armstrong Dunbar
  • Publisher: 37 Ink
  • Date of Publication: February 17, 2017
  • Interest Level: High schoolers and adults

Uprooted: The Japanese American Experience During World War II

~ rachelbenzine ~ 2 Comments

Review:

After the attack on Pearl Harbor in World War II, the U.S. government forced over a hundred thousand Japanese Americans to leave their homes and go to internment camps. There was no evidence that any Japanese Americans had conspired with the Japanese army to plan the attack on Pearl Harbor, or that these Americans were any less loyal to their country than Americans of other race. But these Americans, both immigrants from Japan and those born in America, had to live in the camps for almost four years.

Uprooted tells the story of the Japanese internment camps, but it also describes the larger sociopolitical context that allowed the camps to happen. It starts by exploring the history and culture of Japan, as well as the process of Japanese immigration to America. Marrin describes in detail what life was like in the camps – like the fact that some people were housed in converted horse stables, with each family occupying a horse stall. This moving description of a terrible act in American history is a must-read.

Favorite Passage:

Can another uprooting happen? The short answer: Yes. Early in 2014, while discussing this dark chapter in our history, Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia was brutally frank. “It was wrong,” he said, “but I would not be suprised to see it happen again, in time of war. It is no justification, but it is reality.” Scalia knew that in wartime military necessity and national security should not be used to shield government actions from scrutiny. Yet he also knew that Supreme Court justices still “wear epaulets under their robes.” For good or ill, the high court bows to military and political leaders when it comes to crises in national security.
— Chapter 7, Remembering the Past

What I Loved Most:

I feel like I must have learned about the Japanese Internment Camps at some point when I was in school… but I have absolutely no memory of doing so. I remember spending tons of time learning about the Holocaust, Pearl Harbor and other aspects of World War II, but I don’t recall learning about this major thing that happened on American soil in the war. And this seems like something that is really important for all Americans to know about. Our government rounded up a whole group of people and forced them into camps, based on literally nothing but their race. As Americans, we need to know about the mistakes in our past, and use that knowledge to make a better future.

Read this book if you like:

World War II, American history, using the past to inform the future

Book Details:

American Prison: A Reporter’s Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment

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Review:

Shane Bauer wanted to learn more about the experiences of prisoners in the United States, but he knew that as a journalist, he would face many barriers to getting the real story from people currently in prison. As such, he decided to go undercover at a private prison in Winnfield, Louisiana as a prison guard. American Prison is part memoir of Bauer’s time as a guard, and part chronicle of the history of U.S. prisons. He does a great job of balancing out his experiences while also sharing the larger context of how we’ve done imprisonment in America throughout our country’s history.

Maybe y’all already knew that for-profit prisons are a thing, but I straight up had no idea that this was a concept until I read this book. I have heard many arguments for privatizing major sectors of governmental service, and this book explores the positive and negative implications of privatization of prison services. Absolutely fascinating, and worth the read.

Favorite Passage:

The United States imprisons a higher portion of its population than any country in the world. In 2017 we had 2.2 million people in prisons and jails, a 500 percent increase over the last forty years. We now have almost 5 percent of the world’s population and nearly a quarter of its prisoners.

What I Loved Most:

Bauer has a unique perspective on prison. As a journalist, he was actually captured and put in prison in Iran for more than two years. It’s fascinating to listen to him reflect on his own experience as a prisoner, and reconcile it with his role of prison guard in America. My undergraduate degree is in Psychology, and I loved hearing his clear cognitive dissonance about the experience – he understood what it was like to have your freedoms stripped from you, but still engaged in regulatory behavior while rationalizing it away. Even though Bauer doesn’t directly point it out, there’s lots of fun psychology and sociology theory and application in this book.

Read this book if you like:

Prison, sociology, undercover exposés, memoirs, history

Book Details: