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Maybe someday
32
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
21/100Critics
43/100Scholars
Author:
Edward Ball
Publisher:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Date:
August 4, 2020
The National Book Award-winning author of Slaves in the Family returns with the story of his great-grandfather, a Louisiana carpenter who took up the cause of fanatical racism during the years after the Civil War, joining the Ku Klux Klan and participating in the slaughter of hundreds of Black people.
What The Reviewers Say
Mr. Ball artfully reanimates ideas that attempted to justify slavery and, later, black subjugation.
... a haunting tapestry of interwoven stories that inform us not just about our past but about the resentment-bred demons that are all too present in our society today.
Life of a Klansman implicitly asks how White Americans can meaningfully confront their relationship to enduring white supremacy, whether they are directly tied to enslavers or terrorists, as Ball is, or linked less detectably by reaping the inescapable benefits of a deeply embedded racial privilege that is slavery’s lasting consequence.
... a book designed to discomfort its reader.
