An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

Ben Waber reviewed An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States by Kyle T. Mays

A Good But Uneven Analysis of US History

3 stars

Compared to other books examining Black or Native American history, this one is much more probing in the questions it asks, as well as in its refreshing, original prose. I wish the book was twice as long - there are some events that are strangely glossed over while others that receive much more detailed consideration and are better for it. Other historical accounts would disagree with some of the conclusions here, which are ideologically-driven to a level that I'm not comfortable with in an academic book. If you're looking for an entry point into US history, however, this is a good place to start.

Eduardo Santiago reviewed An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States by Kyle T. Mays

Review of 'An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

An intriguing premise that unfortunately didn’t deliver (for me). Too many underdeveloped threads, too disjointed overall. It wasn’t clear who his audience is: mostly scholarly in tone and content, but his authorial snark and jargon (“dope”, “stan”) feel out of place. His sportsball and pop-culture chapters make little sense to those of us immune to those vices -- I ended up just skipping whole sections because I had no idea who any of those people are, or (more importantly) what their cultural/ethnic identity is: paragraphs about Famous-So-And-So doing such-or-such a cultural appropriation make no sense if I don’t know whether So-And-So is Black, Indian, White, Other.

The early U.S. history chapters were the best: informative, thoughtful (Mays is a genuinely moral person who cares about nuance and complexity). Enough to bump 3.2 stars to 4. I’m glad to have read much of it, just not all of it, if that …

An intriguing premise that unfortunately didn’t deliver (for me). Too many underdeveloped threads, too disjointed overall. It wasn’t clear who his audience is: mostly scholarly in tone and content, but his authorial snark and jargon (“dope”, “stan”) feel out of place. His sportsball and pop-culture chapters make little sense to those of us immune to those vices -- I ended up just skipping whole sections because I had no idea who any of those people are, or (more importantly) what their cultural/ethnic identity is: paragraphs about Famous-So-And-So doing such-or-such a cultural appropriation make no sense if I don’t know whether So-And-So is Black, Indian, White, Other.

The early U.S. history chapters were the best: informative, thoughtful (Mays is a genuinely moral person who cares about nuance and complexity). Enough to bump 3.2 stars to 4. I’m glad to have read much of it, just not all of it, if that makes sense.

Ben Waber

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An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

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