PositiveThe San Francisco Chronicle...a doleful and stirring narrative of how Michael Allen Alexander’s magnetic smile slowly dimmed until he was found shot to death in the passenger seat of a car in Los Angeles ... Cuz is more than Michael’s story. It’s the story of Los Angeles in the late 1980s and early ’90s, a city where black and brown girls and boys engulfed by the crack epidemic and the rise of street gangs had no guardian angels. It’s a story about the so-called war on drugs and how, instead of treating communities ravaged by crack and heroin, the government responded by locking up millions of people.
Wesley Lowery
RaveThe San Francisco Chronicle...a vivid timeline of the movement from its origins to present day. And Lowery allows the voices of the new generation of activists, who have democratized reporting on unrest through real-time social media updates, to tell their stories ... Lowery’s clear-eyed reporting is exceeded only by his thoughtful, sharp sentences. He allows pain to seep into the prose, not hiding the anguish of a black man reporting on so much black death while pointing out connections that can’t be ignored.