… if this book is a departure for [Gordon-Reed], it’s still guided by the humane skepticism that has animated her previous work … tiny, moving essays … No matter what she’s looking at, Gordon-Reed pries open this space between the abstract and particular … One of the things that makes this slender book stand out is Gordon-Reed’s ability to combine clarity with subtlety, elegantly carving a path between competing positions, instead of doing as too many of us do in this age of hepped-up social-media provocations by simply reacting to them. In On Juneteenth she leads by example, revisiting her own experiences, questioning her own assumptions — and showing that historical understanding is a process, not an end point.
