Ride or Die

June 1, 2022

Award-winning Danish author/critic Andersen tells The LEGO Story, plumbing company archives and interviewing third-generation Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen to discover how his family turned those cute interlocking plastic rectangles into international toy stars (75,000-copy first printing). With The Last Campaign, Pulitzer Prize finalist Brands chronicles the battle between Apache leader, warrior, and medicine man Geronimo and U.S. general William Tecumseh Sherman that would determine the shape of the United States and the fate of Indigenous peoples beyond the Mississippi River. The New York Times best-selling Brinkley chronicles the Silent Spring Revolution of the Sixties, when environmental activists pushed first for legislation aimed at protecting the wilderness, then expanded to fighting the pollutants despoiling Earth and risking public health (200,000-copy first printing). Pulitzer Prize finalist Conover (Newjack) takes us to Cheap Land Colorado, chronicling an off-the-grid community in San Luis Valley where he lived on and off for four years so that he could get close to people who traded security for freedom or had nothing left to lose. A senior writer at the Wall Street Journal, Hilsenrath tracks the career of U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen (35,000-copy first printing). Soros Fellow and chair of the Freelance Taskforce for the National Association of Black Journalists, Hubbard argues that hip-hop ignores or demeans Black women in Ride-or-Die (30,000-copy first printing). In Number One Is Walking, Martin recaps his remarkable acting career in a graphic memoir featuring the artwork of New Yorker cartoonist Harry Bliss (300,000-copy first printing). With The World Record Book of Racist Stories, comedian Ruffin and big sister Lamar join forces to repeat the success of their New York Times best-selling You'll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey, detailing the absurdist aspects of everyday racism (75,000-copy first printing). In Control, geneticist Rutherford (A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived) revisits the rise of eugenics from its origins in Victorian England to its awful apotheosis in Nazi Germany and its ongoing legacy today. What's the impact on our psyches of knowing that the universe originated 14 billion years ago and is still expanding? Ask Swimme, author of Cosmogenesis and host and cocreator of PBS's Journey of the Universe. Wrongly accused of drug dealing in New Jersey and sentenced to a life behind bars, Wright (Marked for Life) studied law in the prison library, helped overturn the convictions of numerous fellow inmates, then won his own release and now practices law in the same courtroom where he was convicted (125,000-copy first printing).

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 19, 2022
Sociologist Hubbard debuts with a standout study of how the lionization of the “ride-or-die chick” negatively impacts Black women. Defining the “ride-or-die chick” as a woman “renowned for the sacrifices she made for her partner at almost any cost to herself,” Hubbard examines the pivotal role hip-hop music played in bringing the concept to the mainstream and cementing it in the psyche of Black men and women. She challenges the cultural expectation that Black women should quickly forgive the emotional and financial abuse they suffer and cites the rapturous response to Jay-Z’s album 4:44 as “reflective of how too many of us run to celebrate Black men who have finally seen the light of their wrongdoings” without “examin what they are doing to change their behavior.” Hubbard also explores how cultural representations of the street corners within Black neighborhoods often fail to “acknowledge the trauma and violence Black women and girls endure on these corners”; illuminates microaggressions faced by LGBTQ Black women; and analyzes the backlash to Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s celebration of Black female sexuality in the song “WAP.” Effortlessly blending personal anecdotes, academic scholarship, and pop culture analysis, this is an authentic and cathartic call for change.

October 15, 2022
A journalism instructor and Black feminist activist offers her perspective on the "missing narrative about Black women's lives" in contemporary culture. Hubbard derived much of her early views about Black womanhood from hip-hop songs like the LOX's "Ryde or Die, Bitch," which celebrates the self-sacrificing Black woman. The author shows how this female archetype has deep roots in both Black culture and the Black church and exists across boundaries of education and class. After finishing her master's degree in criminal justice, Hubbard willingly became the emotional and financial support for a convict boyfriend, his young daughter, and ex-girlfriend, all while spending several days a week volunteering for her community church. The author examines the fraught nature of public spaces for Black women, especially the "corner." Songs like Common's "The Corner" speak of street corners as spaces of brotherhood and safety for Black men, but for women, those same spaces are rife with the possibility of harassment. "For black women and our bodies," writes the author, "we have a complicated relationship and experience with those corners that has been...ignored in our community." Indeed, the Black men "hunted by the police" are the ones who, along with the police, hunt Black women and girls to inflict harm upon them. Hubbard also shows how the violence Black women experience is linguistic. She suggests that labels like queen exist to keep them in their place and divide them from each other. Used by men to compliment "good," sexually modest Black women, queen does nothing more than force women to play the kind of respectability politics that turn up in the lyrics of even the most progressive women hip-hop artists--e.g., Lauryn Hill, whom the author discusses in depth--and contribute to the "collective and individual harm...[of] Black women." Candid and provocative, Hubbard's examination of the unspoken truths about Black women's lives is well rendered and liberating. An important book about significant issues that often go unexplored.

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November 1, 2022

Award-winning writer Hubbard (journalism, Univ. of Toronto) pens a conflicted love letter to hip-hop, arguing that the "ride-or-die chick" cultural phenomenon is a double-edged sword. Growing up, Hubbard was inspired by the storytelling in hip-hop's depictions of life in lower-income areas. She cites The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill as a seminal album that made her feel seen as a Black woman. It wasn't until her worldview expanded and diversified that she began to see the misogyny in some hip-hop songs. She saw the ways in which many lyrics serve to oppress Black women and reinforce stereotypes that they should be self-sacrificing. She examines Jay-Z's 4:44, noting that public declarations of contrition are not enough. Hubbard also recounts revealing conversations with a friend of hers, who is Black, a woman, and gay, which led to her confronting her own latent homophobic attitudes that she attributes to the influence of the hip-hop lyrics she grew up listening to. Ultimately, she seeks a world where Black women are free to be themselves, without judgment for being either ride-or-die or choosing to reject that paradigm. VERDICT Perfect for fans of Brittney Cooper's Eloquent Rage and Mikki Kendall's Hood Feminism.--Barrie Olmstead

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.