If Book Reviews Could Kill

Suchitra, Bhakti and Madhuri analyze the genre of "book reviews" and the ways in which they are instrumental in shaping opinion on writers, literature, ideas, and culture, more broadly. Book reviews are an extremely vital part of all newspapers and media outlets but the undergirding questions is who gets reviewed and who gets ignored? Book reviews have moved away from tackling ideas, and have instead become publicity and marketing tools for big, corporate publishers. The discussion focuses on the explicit anti-intellectualism of book reviews. There is a complete disregard for challenging the mainstream narratives and there is an obsession with accessible and simplistic writing. Books reviews deliberately shun complex, theoretical or philosophical works. Book reviews have a gatekeeping function and further the notion that political writing is bad writing that does not deserve to be reviewed at all. Thus, liberal media tends to sustain the propaganda that there is a divide between art and politics. The episode also touches on the ways in which identity politics prevents deeper engagement with writers of color. Finally, the hosts explore the controversy around Ta-Nehisi Coates' latest book The Messenger since Coates has found himself at the center of pernicious debates in mainstream media because of his pro-Palestinian stance.

Keywords: books, novels, book reviews media, ethics, narratives, gatekeeping, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Palestine, African literature, Publishing, style, genre, anti-intellectualism, marketing, scholars, experts, writers, authors, literature.

Key takeaways:

• Book reviews might seem harmless and amusing but they perform meaning-making activity by shaping opinions and narratives.
• Book reviews peddle an explicit anti-intellectualism
• The book review industry is in the business of selling books rather than introducing readers to new ideas.
• Media outlets only review books published by big corporate presses and sideline independent, smaller or academic presses.
• Media outlets only publish reviews about accessible books that are written in a simplistic style and categorically do not match the book with an expert.
• The publishign world along with the book review industry has birthed a world of similarly written books that are apolitical and unthreatening to mainstream narratives.
• Identity politics plays a disproportionate role through the authors that liberal media chooses to anoint but this also adversely precludes deep engagement with the author and their works.
• Book reviews promote and sustain the American liberal ideology that art and politics are separate, and that political writing is bad writing that does not deserve to be reviewed.
• The controversy around Ta-Nehisi's Coates' pro-Palestinian book The Messenger has unmasked the liberal establishment and shown their acute Zionist bias.
• There are smaller and independent media outlets that continue to publish smart and engaged book reviews.

References:

If Books Could Kill podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/if-books-could-kill/id1651876897

The Messenger by Ta-Nehisi Coates: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/653438/the-message-by-ta-nehisi-coates/

Aaron Bady Twitter/X thread: https://x.com/zunguzungu/status/1846515885663781370

Los Angeles Review of Books: https://lareviewofbooks.org/

Africa is a Country https://africasacountry.com/

Biblio Review of Books https://biblio-india.org/

Trinity of Fundamentals, review by @VivaFalastinLeen https://www.tiktok.com/@vivafalastinleen/video/7325549111455780142?lang=en

Suchitra Vijayan  is a writer, photographer and activist. She is the founder and Executive Director of The Polis Project. For her first book, The Midnight's Border: A People's History of India, Suchitra traveled across the 9000-mile Indian border. A barrister by training, she previously worked for the United Nations war crimes tribunals in Yugoslavia and Rwanda before co-founding the Resettlement Legal Aid Project in Cairo, which gives legal aid to Iraqi refugees. She is the co-author of How Long Can the Moon Be Caged? Voices of Indian Political Prisoners (2023) which offers a lens into today's India through the lived experiences of political prisoners.

Bhakti Shringarpure is a writer and editor. She is the co-founder of Warscapes magazine which transitioned into the Radical Books Collective, a multi-faceted community building project that creates an alternative, inclusive and non-commercial approach to books and reading. Bhakti is the author of Cold War Assemblages: Decolonization to Digital (2019) and editor of Literary Sudans: An Anthology of Literature from Sudan and South Sudan (2017), Imagine Africa (2017) Mediterranean: Migrant Crossings (2018) and most recently, Insurgent Feminisms: Writing War (2023).

Madhuri Sastry is a former lawyer, specializing in international and human rights law. She was the publisher of Guernica Magazine. Her political writing, cultural criticism, interviews and essays have appeared in several publications including The Nation, Guernica, Slate, Bitch and New York Magazine. She is on the editorial board at the Polis Project.