Feb 24

Feb 24 Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019

Author: Edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain
Publisher: One World
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop, which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.

Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

Cover Description

An epoch-defining history of African America, the first to appear in a generation, Four Hundred Souls is a chronological account of four hundred years of Black America as told by ninety of America's leading Black writers.

Curated by Ibram X. Kendi, author of the number one bestseller How To Be an Antiracist, and fellow historian Keisha N. Blain, Four Hundred Souls begins with the arrival of twenty enslaved Ndongo people on the shores of the British colony in mainland America in 1619, the year before the arrival of the Mayflower.

In eighty chronological chapters, the book charts the tragic and triumphant four-hundred-year history of Black American experience in a choral work of exceptional power and beauty.

Contributors include some of the best-known scholars, writers, historians, journalists, lawyers, poets and activists of contemporary America who together bring to vivid life countless new facets to the drama of slavery and resistance, segregation and survival, migration and self-discovery, cultural oppression and world-changing artistic, literary and musical creativity. In these pages are dozens of extraordinary lives and personalities, rescued from the archives and restored to their rightful place in America's narrative, as well as the ghosts of millions more.

Four Hundred Souls is an essential work of story-telling and reclamation that redefines America and changes our notion of how history is written.

TL;DR Review

Four Hundred Souls is a triumph of community history. Its unique format and exceptional contributors make it one of the most noteworthy works of nonfiction I’ve read.

For you if: You want to learn more about African-American history.

Full Review

Lately, I’ve been enjoying the practice of spreading a nonfiction book out over the course of each month (usually a chapter or so a day). I chose Four Hundred Souls for February to honor Black History Month. I’m so glad I did — this book is really something special.

As the book’s subtitle says, Four Hundred Souls is a community history of African America between 1619 and 2019 (400 years). It’s organized into chronological chapters — essays, stories, poems — by different writers, each touching on a topic relevant to a stretch of that time period. The audiobook also features a full cast of narrators, including some of the authors reading their own work.

The creativity, community, and talent that went into writing and editing this book is unparalleled. I learned a lot and enjoyed it a lot, too. Every essay strikes a different chord, but a deep one. The poetry is, of course, excellent and moving.

I highly recommend that you read this. And I think the approach of breaking it up, reading it slowly, and allowing each chapter to sink its teeth into you is definitely the way to go.