If you follow Sarah Kendzior on Twitter, you know she warned that Donald Trump would likely win, even as Republicans scoffed at the idea; and she warned people to keep an eye on Paul Manafort long before he was in the headlines.
But Kendzior is no psychic. She’s just whip-smart and an expert on authoritarian governments. She’s also that rare writer with an analyst’s brain and an empath’s heart. Both shine through in this collection, which takes on racism, gentrification, media, the “post-employment” economy, education, income disparity, and creeping American fascism.
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Though the essays are topical and political (they were originally published by Al-Jazeera and gathered into an e-book), one senses they’ll stand the test of time, just for the beauty of the prose and the soundness of the philosophy. The title essay, in particular, is lyrical and heartbreaking. It’s a tour of St. Louis in which the hyperlocal and hyperpeculiar are used to explore larger archetypal truths about America.
“St. Louis showed the world ice cream and hamburgers and ragtime and blues and racism and sprawl and riots and poverty and sudden, devastating decay,” she writes. “In the twenty-first century, St. Louis is starting to look a lot like other American cities, because in the twenty-first century, America has started looking a lot more like St. Louis.” But she’s no nihilist. She adds that St. Louis’ firsthand experience with dysfunction and trauma in a time “when the American dream is dying for everyone” makes us the perfect laboratory for people to rise up, to find solutions to inequality, and to truly live up to our old moniker “Future City of America.”
