The Monthly Digest: February 2021

Black History Month

Today, as we have done in years past, LARB honors Black History Month by highlighting a series of reviews, essays, interviews, and exchanges of letters we published in January. Below you will find a poignant essay on the Compton Christmas Parade; a penetrating interview with Kiley Reid, author of the breakout debut novel Such a Fun Age; a report on African literature in the digital sphere; considerations of the legacies of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Barack Obama, the Blues, and Progressive-era racism; as well as reviews of new memoirs and works of YA and Africanfuturist fiction. — LARB Editorial

Beyond Bias: The Case for an Abolitionist Psychology
Implicit bias training does not curb racism in police departments. And yet the fantasy persists that this is the way to address antiblack police...
Jan 18, 2021
I Hope That We Can Be Together Soon
Revisiting the 1973 Compton Christmas parade.
Jan 27, 2021
How “Such a Fun Age” Came to Be: An Interview with Kiley Reid
Jabeen Akhtar talks to author Kiley Reid about her debut novel, “Such a Fun Age.”
Jan 2, 2021
African Literature and Digital Culture
The digital impulses of African creativity have fundamentally altered literary culture.
Jan 4, 2021
Harlem’s Hero Revisited
Peniel E. Joseph reviews the new biography of Malcolm X by Les Payne and Tamara Payne, "The Dead Are Arising."
Jan 18, 2021
“MLK/FBI” and “Her Socialist Smile” Desanitize Two Radical Icons
Eileen G’Sell compares two documentaries about Martin Luther King, Jr. and Helen Keller, both of whom had radical politics that have been whitewashed.
Jan 18, 2021
An America That Could Explain: On Barack Obama’s “A Promised Land”
Barack Obama’s new memoir is a book hiding within a book.
Jan 1, 2021
Fictional Blues: Narrative Self-Invention from Bessie Smith to Jack White
An illuminating, thought-provoking, refreshingly broad-minded new book about the blues.
Jan 4, 2021
Lying with Numbers
At the end of the 19th century social scientists embraced statistics that “proved” Black criminality. Therein lies a tale.
Jan 29, 2021
Family Fault Lines: On Nadia Owusu’s “Aftershocks”
A new memoir about growing up on uncertain and shifting ground.
Jan 12, 2021
Escaping the Cycle
A new YA novel that shatters stereotypes of Black masculinity and fatherhood.
Jan 16, 2021
The Death of the Future: On Nnedi Okorafor’s “Remote Control”
Dan Friedman reviews Nnedi Okorafor’s new book, “Remote Control.”
Jan 23, 2021
“When They Go Low, We Go High”: Keeping Calm in the Critical Race Memoir
Joel Rhone reads “What It Is: Race, Family, and One Thinking Black Man’s Blues” by Clifford Thompson in context.
Jan 8, 2021
Letter to the Editor: Clifford Thompson Responds to Joel Rhone
Clifford Thompson and Joel Rhone exchange letters to the editor in response to Rhone’s review of Thompson’s “What It Is.”
Jan 24, 2021