Welcome, creatures! Three book notes.
Abuse of Black Power Comes As No Surprise
James Forman, Jr’s 2017 Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America is a cri de coeur from a DC native and former public defender. Forman knows the misery wrought by violent crime. He knows the anger and desperation that fueled the law-and-order efforts of what’s been called the “Black silent majority.” And also he has seen the results of those efforts: the specific mechanisms by which explicitly pro-Black law-and-order policies led to policing that targets Black communities, destroying the lives and futures of the low-level offenders caught up in the gears.
It’s an important book that feels at least as urgent now as when it was published. It’s deeply-grounded in Forman’s hometown and my own, DC’s Home Sweet Homicide Scene years. It’s also well-constructed, weaving in personal stories and pungent details. I don’t know if my favorite moment was “the police band play[ing] Marvin Gaye’s ‘Let’s Get It On’” at the swearing-in of DC’s first home-rule city council… or the heartbreaking quote from a pre-mayoralty Marion Barry: “G-d---n junkies would steal from their mothers.” I bet every one of you can think of a similar little lacerating premonition you’ve voiced, a little judgment expressed before you knew how much there really is to judge: like that thing I always think about in The Gift of Fear, where people make jokes that express what they’re really afraid of, so they can say it without having to do anything about it yet.
There are unlearned lessons here about policing and contempt, about the way imposition of order so easily becomes its own source of chaos; about the District’s horrific years of soaring violence, whose consequences we’re all still living with. Forman knows that restoration of community can’t happen when wrongdoing goes unpunished. And yet if all you see is the need for punishment, restoration won’t happen—even in all-Black settings, and even with the best intentions.
Who Have Never Been Happy or Good
Also read Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City. This is a fun-enough cocaine novelette, it bounces right along being guilty and trying to have fun, as guilty people will. It didn’t hit as hard as Story of My Life, for me, but it does include a wonderfully self-abasing scene of somebody not protesting when he gets fired, I always like that.
And it ends, have you noticed this McInerney guy’s Irish surname, it ends with a genuinely touching and insightful chapter about mother-longing, mother-mourning. A funny chapter, his mom gets quite daring as she’s dying; but also deeply moving. In the end the arc of this novel reminded me of “Stew”’s “Passing Strange,” the only musical I wholeheartedly love, though Stew is gentler than McInerney. McInerney ends on an image of grace in humiliation, which you know I loved, and for some of us it’s the only way.
Literally Just a Biography of an Animal
The most fun thing I’ve read recently is Rick McIntyre’s Reign of Wolf 21: The Saga of Yellowstone’s Legendary Druid Pack. This is one in a series of biographies of, yes this is real, the alpha wolves of Yellowstone Park. I have loved wolves since I was a very little girl so this was always going to be a treat for me, but let me see if I can suggest some of its delight to the rest of you.
I found this book via a twitter thread that called Wolf 21, iirc, “a cross between Batman and the Buddha.” Wolf 21 built the biggest pack on record, shepherding his pups and yearlings to survival through a combination of absolute walk-away-from-the-explosion badassery and cooperative, humble care. This guy never lost a fight—and never killed a rival. He was so faithful to his longtime mate, the equally impressive, equally cooperation-focused Wolf 42, that when McIntyre offered his speculation on the reasons behind Wolf 21’s last actions to a friend, “she began to sob. I asked what was wrong and after taking a few moments to compose herself, she said, ‘Why can’t I find a man like 21?’”
He’s just, like, a very very cool wolf. McIntyre’s admiration for him shines through. McIntyre is just fully in the tank for the wolves he admires, and sort of hilariously judgmental toward the ones he doesn’t respect, especially the “bad boy” Wolf 302. (Ladies Love Cool 302, I regret to report.) There are vivid descriptions of wolf life throughout the book, of course; you do have to fight through some difficult paragraphs about den arrangements, where the fact that the park won’t use people-style names for the wolves makes it hard to follow what’s happening, but your reward is portraits of wolf bravery, wolf resilience, wolf playfulness. You also get to see that although this book focuses on an alpha male, the females determine much of their own future. They rely on the males for food when they’re denning or nursing pups, but they do seek out their own partners, and they are the ones driving much of the pack-formation we see in this book.
Look, I adored this book. If it sounds fun for you, check it out.
icymi
“What If Saul Had Sent Jonathan to Conversion Therapy?”
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Wolf via Wikimedia Commons.