BOOKS FROM RUSSIAAn Immigrant's Love Letter to the West
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Set in Russia
Male author
Description:
The book sets out to discuss themes including free speech and cancel culture through the perspective of a non-Western immigrant. It particularly addresses why the West has a negative view of itself, and why that is self-destructive.
One of the themes of the book is the history of slavery and the way it is taught in American schools. By talking about the life of his great grandfather as a serf in the Russian Empire, the Soviet gulags, Barbary corsairs and slavery in African kingdoms Kisin pushes back against the notion that slavery was unique to the West and makes a case that slavery in Africa long predated the Atlantic slave trade.
Kisin also draws parallels between the dismissal and ostracisation of his physicist grandfather and his family for criticising the Soviet Union's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan and the treatment of people who publicly express the view that there are only two sexes in modern-day Western liberal democracies, cautioning of the tendency for this type of authoritarianism to get worse, not better.
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