Killing Trayvons: an Anthology of American Violence

by Kevin Alexander Gray, Jeffrey St. Clair (Editor), Joann Wypijewski

Killing Trayvons: An Anthology of American Violence tracks the case and explores why Trayvon’s name and George Zimmerman’s not guilty verdict symbolized all the grieving, the injustice, the profiling and free passes based on white privilege and police power: the long list of Trayvons known and unknown. With contributions from Robin D.G. Kelley, Rita Dove, Cornel West and Amy Goodman, Thandisizwe Chimurenga, Alexander Cockburn, Etan Thomas, Tara Skurtu, bell hooks and Quassan Castro, June Jordan, Jesse Jackson, Tim Wise, Patricia Williams, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Vijay Prashad, Jesmyn Ward and more, Killing Trayvons is an essential addition to the literature on race, violence and resistance.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, The United States Of America, Politics, African American

420 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2014

Reviews

[Matt Sautman · Rating 5 out of 5]

An anthology of writings and historical documents pertaining to Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman, racist government infrastructure, and identity politics in 21st century America, Killing Trayvons is a collective effort to make sense of the Zimmerman verdict and failures in the American justice system. This book does for Trayvon Martin what Toni Morrison's Race-ing Justice, En-Gender-ing Power does for Anita Hill and what Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy does for interrogating the death penalty on the United States. A thick volume, Killing Trayvons provides a wealth of material, while the short length of the majority of the entries makes these works easily consumable. The organization feels suggestive of a documentary, bearing as much resemblance as the recent James Baldwin collection, I am Not Your Negro, as it bears to more traditional anthologies.

[Andrea Brinkley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finally finished this. It was very heavy and very conflicting. I am reminded that racism knows no racial boundaries, and that it comes in many different formats. The thing I took away from this whole book however can best be summed up in this one excerpt:

"The law has not kept pace with the brain science… these things are happening at nano seconds at subliminal levels, not at conscious levels. Civil rights laws were written at a time when, in this country, racism happened at a conscious level. We don't even understand our brains on race now... we have not dealt with the fact that most people are still carrying unconscious bias that is racially motivated, but not at a conscious level. Our current legal structure does not work for how we do race in America right now."

Examine your biases. Keep your eyes open. It is actually a matter of life and death.

[Karrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

awesome anthology