Review 160: Stakes Is High

Stakes Is High: Life After the American Dream by Mychal Denzel Smith
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a short book of just a few long essays that have a powerful punch. The book is sharp, intelligent, and well reasoned, as a statement about the most powerful issues the American people are grappling with today, and in the past. Smith covers race, policing, prisons, power men hold over women, the current presidency, and much more.

Smith covers Shirley Chisholm, which I had very little knowledge about her, being the first black person to run for presidential nomination of a major party, and the first black woman elected to Congress. He imagines, briefly what might have been if she won the 1972 election and became president.

There is the part that strikes home, how when we say “American” we mean the people living in the United States, when it discounts all those people living in the continent of America, more North and South of us. How the United States is an Empire, with colonies such as Puerto Rico.

There is so much more here. The book is densely packed. A book that is part of the conversation that is not to be missed.

Thanks to Bold Type Books/Perseus Books and NetGalley for an uncorrected electronic advance review copy of this book.