The historian Ibram X Kendi, one of the foremost scholars of race in the US, was born in Queens, New York, in 1982. He earned a PhD in African American studies from Temple University and now runs the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University. A MacArthur “genius grant” recipient, Kendi is the author of Stamped from the Beginning, which won a National Book award in 2016, and the 2020 bestseller How to Be an Antiracist, which comes out in paperback on 2 February (Vintage). He lives in Boston with his wife, Sadiqa Edmonds Kendi, a paediatric emergency physician, and their daughter.
1. Nonfiction
Torn Apart by Dorothy Roberts
This is the book I read in 2022 that was the most mind-blowing. The subtitle is How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families – and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World. Roberts, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, really lays out the intricacies of the so-called child welfare system to demonstrate how it hasn’t been designed to protect children, let alone black children and families. In most cases, it’s doing the very opposite, by taking children away from families and placing them in highly abusive foster-care systems or children’s home. This is a devastating indictment of the system.
2. Gameshow
I don’t really like trivia per se, but I’m an avid Jeopardy! watcher. I tend to be more knowledgeable about history and literature, and less familiar with questions from Europe or Asia or even Latin America, but I get my fair share. Last year, as I was watching it live at home with my wife, Sadiqa, my name came up as one of the answers, which was kind of cool. I was in shock!
3. Film
The Woman King (Dir Gina Prince-Bythewood)
The Woman King is based on an elite, all-women fighting force that was a critical military arm within the nation of Dahomey, in what’s now Benin. Viola Davis plays their general and she does an incredible job in that role. There’s a whole bunch of amazing fight scenes, oftentimes fighting and defeating men, which was great to see. But what was fascinating, aside from that, was the sheer humanity of Davis’s character. She did a masterful job of capturing this fierce military general who was also deeply humane.
There was some controversy around the film because Dahomey was a major human trading nation and that wasn’t necessarily rendered in the film. But even as a historian I understand the difference between a documentary and a drama and in other continents there have been so many films that have taken a major figure or fighting unit and made them these glorious heroes and heroines, so why can’t we do the same thing for West Africa?
4. TV
The Walking Dead (AMC)
One of my favourite shows, The Walking Dead, ended this year, after 11 seasons. We didn’t start watching until maybe five years ago, so we had to binge-watch to catch up. It’s set in a world of zombies (who are called “walkers”) and humans who are trying to survive and not get bitten. What’s interesting is that over time, as humans learn how to protect themselves from the walkers, it largely becomes a battle between humans. It’s hard to say the final season was satisfying, because we wanted the show to continue, but we did enjoy it.
5. Fiction
Black Cloud Rising by David Wright Faladé
This is a novel set during the civil war in the United States, based on an all-black regiment of former slaves. It’s hard as a historian to write about the full scope of human experiences with the existing records and evidence, so novelists have the ability to imagine what that could have been and certainly Black Cloud Rising does that. It was well written and had some really gripping scenes. Also, to see Maroons – black people in the Americas who fled slavery and established their own communities – represented in a major American novel was fascinating.
6. Place
South Africa
I had the honour of visiting South Africa for the first time last year with my family. I would recommend it for the sheer beauty of the country, particularly Cape Town. As a student of history and racism, I was able to learn more about apartheid and its lingering effects, such as income inequality. While we were there, a new Zulu king was being crowned and we got to see rituals being performed around the coronation. We visited art galleries and purchased works by local artists and my mother and my partner brought home a lot of spices from a store in Durban.
