A horrifying yet necessary picture of exploitation and poverty in the Congo.
A penetrating exposé on the deliberate smoke screens created by powerful companies to obscure the realities behind the abysmal conditions of cobalt miners in the Congo.
Cobalt is highly valuable as an essential component of the rechargeable batteries that power laptops, tablets, smartphones, and electric vehicles. As such, the demand for cobalt has risen exponentially in the last decade. In 2021, 72% of the global supply was mined in the Congo, along what is called the Central African Copper Belt. In this eye-opening and disturbing investigative report, Kara, the author of multiple books on modern global slavery, paints a stark portrait of the appalling conditions in the mining villages, expertly capturing the “frenzy” of digging by so-called artisanal miners, who toil in unspeakable conditions for a pittance. These workers are the first link in the exploitative chain of resource extraction that keeps millions of Africans in poverty and ill health and degrades the environment, all while enriching massive corporations and foreign investors. Nationalized by former dictator Joseph Mobutu, then sold to the Chinese in 2012 by subsequent dictator Joseph Kabila, the mines were supposed to support infrastructure, education, and health care, yet little of that money has benefited the Congolese people. Peasants are so desperate for work that digging compels the whole family to participate, even the children; there are few schools, and those that exist are too expensive for low-wage workers. Corporations such as Apple, Tesla, Samsung, and Daimler claim to follow regulations, but Kara demonstrates their duplicity and empty public relations rhetoric. In more than two decades of “research into slavery and child labor, I have never seen more extreme predation for profit than I witnessed at the bottom of the global cobalt supply chains.” The author’s well-written, forcefully argued report exposes the widespread, debilitating human ramifications of our device-driven global society.
A horrifying yet necessary picture of exploitation and poverty in the Congo.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-250-28430-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.
A thoughtful program for eradicating poverty from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted.
“America’s poverty is not for lack of resources,” writes Desmond. “We lack something else.” That something else is compassion, in part, but it’s also the lack of a social system that insists that everyone pull their weight—and that includes the corporations and wealthy individuals who, the IRS estimates, get away without paying upward of $1 trillion per year. Desmond, who grew up in modest circumstances and suffered poverty in young adulthood, points to the deleterious effects of being poor—among countless others, the precarity of health care and housing (with no meaningful controls on rent), lack of transportation, the constant threat of losing one’s job due to illness, and the need to care for dependent children. It does not help, Desmond adds, that so few working people are represented by unions or that Black Americans, even those who have followed the “three rules” (graduate from high school, get a full-time job, wait until marriage to have children), are far likelier to be poor than their White compatriots. Furthermore, so many full-time jobs are being recast as contracted, fire-at-will gigs, “not a break from the norm as much as an extension of it, a continuation of corporations finding new ways to limit their obligations to workers.” By Desmond’s reckoning, besides amending these conditions, it would not take a miracle to eliminate poverty: about $177 billion, which would help end hunger and homelessness and “make immense headway in driving down the many agonizing correlates of poverty, like violence, sickness, and despair.” These are matters requiring systemic reform, which will in turn require Americans to elect officials who will enact that reform. And all of us, the author urges, must become “poverty abolitionists…refusing to live as unwitting enemies of the poor.” Fortune 500 CEOs won’t like Desmond’s message for rewriting the social contract—which is precisely the point.
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 9780593239919
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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