Review by Booklist Review
The latest installment in Beacon Press's superb ReVisioning History series emphasizes solidarity, intersectionality, and the indigenous identities of both Native and African Americans. The book avoids retreading ground already covered by others in the series and can perhaps be better understood as a history of the cultural presence of Afro-Indigenous solidarity, or the lack thereof, rather than a straightforward chronicling of historical events. Saginaw Chippewa scholar Mays (Hip Hop Beats, Indigenous Rhymes, 2018) highlights moments of connection between Black and Indigenous people, as well as the ways in which the two communities have reproduced, inadvertently and on purpose, patterns of white supremacy such as Indigenous erasure and anti-Blackness. He is unflinching in his critique of Black and Indigenous scholars and activists whose work undermined, rather than enhanced, solidarity between their communities. The book's central question is how Black and Indigenous people can find common purpose with each other to oppose the unjust structures that form the backbone of American government and society. Nuanced and illuminating, this book is a worthy addition to a remarkable series.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Mays (Hip Hop Beats, Indigenous Rhymes), a professor of African American studies and American Indian studies at UCLA, delivers an accessible and informative look at "the links, both solidarities and tensions, between people of African descent and Indigenous peoples in the United States." He notes that enslaved African labor and expropriated Indigenous land fueled the nation's rapid rise in the 18th and 19th centuries, and explains how the ideology of white settler colonialism shaped the ways in which Black and Indigenous peoples viewed each other. For instance, Black civil rights leaders including W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, and James Baldwin espoused the need for progress for marginalized peoples while perpetuating the myth of the vanishing Native American, according to Mays. In the 1960s and '70s, the Black Power and Red Power movements brought Black and Indigenous peoples together in protest and gave rise to cross-cultural appreciation, which continues in the contemporary Black Lives Matter and Natives Lives Matters movements. Mays's colloquial voice (he refers to Du Bois as "a bad dude") enlivens the often-distressing history, and he draws on his Black and Saginaw Chippewa ancestry to buttress his call for greater solidarity between African Americans and Native Americans. This immersive revisionist history sheds light on an overlooked aspect of the American past. (Nov.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Mays (history, UCLA; Hip Hop Beats, Indigenous Rhymes) fills a much-needed void in the interpretation of U.S. history. The author's background intersects both Indigenous (Saginaw Chippewa) and African American experiences. While Indigenous and Black histories are often understood as existing in different spheres, Mays challenges this assertion, contending that these two worlds share common--and often intersecting--relationships. The book explores issues in U.S. history, including settler colonialism, racist violence, and slavery. In it, readers will find lesser-quoted but tangible parts of the American past, by which Indigenous and Black people were excluded from the freedoms guaranteed to others. For instance, Jefferson, an enslaver, condemned the British government in the Declaration of Independence by claiming that the Crown had instigated the "merciless Indian" against colonizers. Mays also discusses other critical documents in early American history, such as Tocqueville's Democracy in America. The complicated relationships between Black people and Indigenous people in the Southern United States are also carefully examined. VERDICT Much like David Treuer's Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, this work presents an Indigenous voice in the interpretation of U.S. history that is highly relevant to current discourse on the country's history and present society; it will likely be much sought-after in college classrooms.--Jeffrey Meyer, Iowa Wesleyan Univ.
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A Saginaw Chippewa writer and scholar analyzes the unacknowledged, sometimes fraught relationships between the African American and Indigenous communities. Many White Americans mistakenly believe that the U.S. is the land of freedom and liberty for all. In this latest installment in the publisher's ReVisioning American History series, Mays, a UCLA professor of history, counters this notion by examining how American ideals and wealth were built on "enslaved African labor and the expropriation of Indigenous land." To make his point, the author examines the relationships of Black and Native people to each other and to the U.S. He begins by positing that both groups should be considered Indigenous: one to Africa and the other to the Americas. Slaves were forced to give up tribal identities and assume "Blackness…[as] their condition" just as Natives were forced to assume a generic "red man" identity that marked them as lesser than Whites. This rigid racial hierarchy, along with the institution of slavery, created tensions between Blacks and Natives that became especially apparent during the expansionist phase of American history in the 19th century. For the Cherokee, for example, "race (and antiblackness) became a central component of [their] conceptions of sovereignty." Both Black and Native communities began articulating their identities in the 20th century through groups like the Society of American Indians and the Universal Negro Improvement Association. But it was not until the civil rights era that Martin Luther King Jr. analyzed both communities together to better understand American racism. Since then, there has been some progress in healing intercommunity rifts, but only radical action can help eradicate them. Though not quite as in-depth as some readers may desire, this book reveals uncomfortable truths about the dehumanizing legacies of both capitalism and colonialism while forging a path of reconciliation between the Black and Native communities. Mays offers a solid entry point for further study. An enlightening reexamination of American history. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
