Review of The 1619 Project

The US’s “birthday” just happened earlier this week on July 4th, and many people celebrated our “freedom” by grilling meat, shooting off fireworks, and playing yard games. I had some friends over to grill, yes, but then we played a bunch of board games such as Perpetual Motion Machine, Wingspan, and Lords of Waterdeep. All games I enjoy!

Growing up, I always loved celebrating the 4th of July because my parents told me it was to celebrate our nation’s independence day…mainly, though, because I LOVE fireworks so very, very, very much. I remember growing up and learning about all the cool things our nation’s founding fathers did for our country and how they were all awesome. It wasn’t until, at least, high school (possibly even college), that I started to learn more about our founding fathers, our earliest colonies, and how many wealthy white people enslaved people (primarily) from Africa.

When The 1619 Project book by Nikole Hannah-Jones was published in 2019, I purchased a copy right away. As with many of my purchases, I put it off to read. Partly because I have to be in the right mood to read nonfiction especially, but also because I was intimidated by how long it was. Then 2020 and the after years came along, and my brain went elsewhere…so when my summer grad class had it as an option to read, I jumped all over it! Even better when the LMS at my building mentioned that we had the audiobook version through MackinVIA, so I ended up listening to it during walks. This helped break it up into chunks which makes reading any sort of nonfiction easier for me to read.

Above WAS a picture of my cat, Gizmo, with my hardcover copy of The 1619 Project (for some reason, the image is not longer working...). One thing I really like about the physical copy of the book is that it titles each chapter, tells who wrote it, and shares what the supplemental material is. With the audiobook, it just jumps into each next part without titles or authors or anything like that which was definitely frustrating to say the least. While I’m sure many of you have heard about the original project and possibly listened to the podcast, some might have no idea what I'm talking about. According to The 1619 Project website: “The New York Times Magazine’s award-winning “1619 Project” issue reframed our understanding of American history by placing slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of our national narrative. This new book substantially expands on that work, weaving together eighteen essays that explore the legacy of slavery in present-day America”.

I definitely think every (white) person should partake of The 1619 Project in some format whether it’s as the podcast, Hulu series, book, audiobook, etc. There is so much to learn and relearn about this nation’s history and how many things still impact laws, regulations, and the lives of Black US citizens. I definitely would like to bring this book to my building’s equity team this fall as part of our work. The truly hard part is not just in reading about the history and truth of this nation but in taking action in response to what we learn. I struggle to get out of my feelings and thoughts parts of my brain and move into the action phase…not because I don’t want to but because I don’t always know where to start. That’s completely on me, and I need to do better.

Things I liked or enjoyed:

• (audiobook version): Each section, poem, short story, etc, was narrated by different people. I liked this as it gave life to what was being read.
• The supplemental materials that connect the past with the present and just gave us examples of art were compelling. They also gave me some ideas of new pieces to bring into my own classroom.
• (print version): Each section had an overarching title/idea as well as the creator/author, so I knew what the focus was going to be.
• Super digestible chunks throughout, so we could pull out a section here or there to dive into more deeply.
• Love that there are many “versions” of the work, so people can digest it however they please
• (print version): The notes section at the end where we see where information came from in case we want to go deeper
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Things that I didn’t like:

• In the MackinVIA app, I couldn’t change the speed of the book, and I wanted to push it up to 1.25x speed.
• Also in the app, if I closed out of it, when I opened it up again, the book would error out…or sometimes stop playing just randomly.
• (audiobook version): Sections weren’t labeled and, at first, I didn’t know if the supplemental materials went with the previous or next big sections.
• (audiobook version): Because sections weren’t labeled, just numbered, I was definitely overwhelmed with the 90+ sections of the book.
• Not just a sit and listen book…which isn’t a bad thing, but I had to go back and re-listen at times to parts (which was hard to find the parts I was looking for) to understand.
• I didn’t have anyone else reading the same book, so I didn’t have anyone to bounce my thoughts off of when I was chewing on something.