What to Read Next: When Power Goes Awry

Issue #348: September Pulitzer wrap-up

Gullah Dreamweaver by Sonja Griffin Evans

Happy Friday, readers!

Today’s newsletter features reviews of the three Pulitzer winners that I read in September. The first two are non-fiction titles that clearly focus on what happens when power goes awry (as it so often does), and the third, a novel, does so obliquely in examining religious social structures.

Let’s jump right in since today’s edition is just a little longer than usual.

P.S. If you missed it, check out the subscription drive that I published on Wednesday. I really appreciate all of you who have already contributed!

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September Pulitzer Recap

In September, I finished three Pultizer-winning titles:

• Huey Long by T. Harry Williams (1970, Biography) | Review below

• Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia Peterkin (1929, Fiction) | Review below

• Locking Up Our Own by James Forman (2018, General Non-Fic) | Review below

Overall progress: 55 out of 382 total titles (that number counts series as a single title).

My favorite of this group was easily Huey Long.

Below is what’s (probably) on tap for October.

• Laughing Boy by Oliver La Farge (1930, Fiction)

• The Making of the President 1960 by Theodore White (1962, General Non-Fic)

  • I may try to read the entire four-book series; each entry chronicles a presidential election between 1960 and 1972.

• Franchise by Marcia Chatelain (2021, History)

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Huey Long by T. Harry Williams

Capturing 1970’s Pulitzer Prize for Biography, Huey Long is often considered one of the best biographies of the 20th century. For its storytelling and analysis of power gone awry, I have to agree. 

Huey Long, “the Kingfish” of Louisiana, is a name that regularly appears when exploring the American political scene of the early 1900s. Most of reading about that time period, though, has held Long at arm's length. His life and career were so complex that few have been brave enough to attempt the feat. 

Luckily for readers, Louisianan historian T. Harry Williams supplied us with the perfect 850-page account of Huey Long’s impactful reign as the demagogue of the swamp—a reign that was cut short by an assassin’s bullet when he was just 42 years old. 

As the best biographers do, Williams does a lot of classic reporting that fact-checks the bountiful mythology surrounding Long’s life. Without getting hyperbolic, he breaks down exactly how Long became so influential among the masses, and what led to the violent animosity against him. In short, Long used the Louisiana government as his personal vehicle for achieving exactly the kind of society he wanted. 

Huey Long was truly a larger-than-life character from what should have been a bygone era of American politics. And yet, this book taught me more about our modern political moment than anything contemporary. Can you think of a modern leader who uses crass language, has a compulsive need to control everyone around him, and has been an assassination target? 

Huey Long may be more than 50 years old, but it’s as relevant as ever. Williams’ narrative is catnip for anyone who enjoys psychologically probing political biographies.

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Locking Up Our Own by James Forman

The critiques of America’s mass incarceration culture continue to grow and gain power year after year. One of those critiques, Locking Up Our Own (2017), won a Pulitzer Prize and explores a little-known but very interesting question within that niche: Why did Black communities and leaders readily support mass incarceration—which disproportionately affected Black neighborhoods and families—from the 1970s to the 1990s?

Looking at specific leaders from MLK to Eric Holder, Forman zeroes in on Washington, D.C. to explain the public approval of policies like mandatory minimums and random traffic stops—both of which have now been proven to be hugely detrimental.

As a former public defender, Forman obviously knows what he’s talking about. Peppering in anecdotes from his own experience, the book is certainly impactful. The lawyerliness also comes through, however, which slows down the narrative just a bit.

Locking Up Our Own is in the same class of books as Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow and Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy. Honestly, I found both of those to be better and more memorable, but Forman’s exploration is certainly worthwhile if you’re interested in criminal justice history and reform.

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Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia Peterkin

This story about South Carolinian Black women—penned by a white woman whose husband owned a plantation—has been controversial from the start. Written using the southern Gullah dialect that was later made famous by Zora Neale Thurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Peterkin highlights the plight of Mary, who forever struggles to balance her desire for purity with her desire for pleasure.

In 1929, it was denigrated by critics as being too obscene and by her own family, who wanted her to write nice white characters. The book continues to be criticized today, though for different and far more valid reasons.

Though the writing is fine and the story is somewhat interesting, it certainly felt like Peterkin didn’t actually understand the Black culture she was writing about. There was nothing romantic about picking cotton and the depiction of voodoo-like rituals seemed out of touch.

It wasn’t overtly offensive or racist, and it sure seems that Julia Peterkin had fine intentions, but Scarlet Sister Mary definitely falls into the category of Pulitzer winners that function as historical and cultural artifacts rather than as salient, fulfilling stories for modern readers.

Unless you’re a Pulitzer completist, there’s not much reason to read this book.

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Thanks so much for the time and inbox space—I really appreciate it!

-Jeremy