Rating
The Pequod Review:
Russell Banks's Dreaming Up America aims to be an expansive analysis of American history and American culture, but it is superficial and full of vague left/liberal bromides:
Race is our great central story. Our ur-narrative. Everything returns to it, because in it is contained the larger question of where we stand in relation to our God.
[...]
It's a very dangerous situation. We've colonized our own children. Having run out of people on the planet to colonize, run out of people who can't distinguish between beads and trinkets and something of value, having found ourselves no longer able to swap some beads and axes for Manhattan Island, we've ended up colonizing our own children. We're now engaged in a process of auto-colonization. The old sow is eating its own farrow.
The presence of a Cornel West blurb on the cover should have been a warning sign.