Eduardo Santiago
“This man was willing to lose his life to preserve white supremacy,” she writes in a chapter dealing with health care (specifically the ACA), and this sums up the book better than anything I could say. Hernández will have you thinking more deeply about U.S. systems of cruelty--both internal and external (think CIA and dictatorships and overthrows)--than you want to. But you should. Colorism, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, white privilege, the propaganda machine and how it gets stupid people to vote against their own interests. Cuban hypocrites moving here then voting for the orange cockroach, hoping to pull the drawbridge up after them. She effectively interweaves policy coverage with her own and her family’s lived experiences, really driving home the impact of continuous incremental oppression of those who have so little choice.
One disappointment: she never mentions statutory citizenship, the kind granted to subjects born in some U.S. colonies. An understandable oversight, given the number of other second- and third-class citizenships she covers, but it makes me wonder how many other ways there are to define--and limit--citizenship. Given what we know about humans, probably too many to mention.
Recommended reading for everyone.
“This man was willing to lose his life to preserve white supremacy,” she writes in a chapter dealing with health care (specifically the ACA), and this sums up the book better than anything I could say. Hernández will have you thinking more deeply about U.S. systems of cruelty--both internal and external (think CIA and dictatorships and overthrows)--than you want to. But you should. Colorism, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, white privilege, the propaganda machine and how it gets stupid people to vote against their own interests. Cuban hypocrites moving here then voting for the orange cockroach, hoping to pull the drawbridge up after them. She effectively interweaves policy coverage with her own and her family’s lived experiences, really driving home the impact of continuous incremental oppression of those who have so little choice.
One disappointment: she never mentions statutory citizenship, the kind granted to subjects born in some U.S. colonies. An understandable oversight, given the number of other second- and third-class citizenships she covers, but it makes me wonder how many other ways there are to define--and limit--citizenship. Given what we know about humans, probably too many to mention.
Recommended reading for everyone.