[REVIEW] 107 Days, by Kamala Harris

[Buy this book here]

Read time: 5 minutes

On July 21, 2024, Kamala Harris was informed that President Joe Biden was dropping out of the race, choosing not to seek re-election. With only 107 days until the vote, Harris accepted the support of the Democratic party and ran a frantic, flawed, and hopeful campaign opposite Donald J Trump. 

We all know how that turned out. 

Listen, endless navel-gazing takes on this are all over the internet. Everybody has something to say about Kamala Harris and her book, whether or not they’ve read it. I almost didn’t write this review because what could I possibly add to the political dissections and cultural critiques out there?

What I will say is this; like most American Democrats, Kamala Harris is really a diet Republican and that shows here. Much of this book is politicking after the fact. Her stances on Gaza and trans people are annoyingly vague and wrongly focused in a dangerous, deadly way. Her stance on gun ownership is surprisingly cogent. She’s surprisingly transparent about the mistakes she’s made, when she realizes them.  She name drops a lot of celebs and thanks a lot of people in her personal circles. She blows a lot of well-deserved smoke in Trump and Vance’s direction, and says extremely little about the Obamas. 

But memoirs are also about who a person is, not just what they do. And y’all…Kamala Harris is hurt. It’s etched in every page of this. At the heart of it all, Harris is a Black multiracial woman who worked hard, believed in the system, contributed to it, ascended through it and eventually became the best person available for the biggest job in her field. Yet she still lost to a foolish, immoral, underqualified convicted felon with a proven track record of failure, incompetence and dishonesty. Ultimately, that’s who most of America understood and related to. Kamala Harris, on the other hand, is still a target of suspicion, scorn, doubt, and impossible purity tests that no-one else in her position is required to pass. If you believe this book(and I do) Biden and his family also screwed her over behind the scenes, and it’s painful to see how she navigates acceptance of this with her obvious respect for the man and his office. It’s also disheartening to see that even as Vice President, Harris was subjected to all of the attendant micro- and macro- aggressions that every Black and Southeast Asian woman in America endures at work, only on a greater scale and under closer scrutiny. The election was a nasty, nasty wakeup call for Harris and much of America, and her literary tone is a bit groggy in the aftermath.

During the campaign, I mentioned on social media that I’d read J.D. Vance’s book, long before he grew a beard and lost whatever small shriveled semblance of a conscience he had prior to joining Trump’s ticket. Nobody cared. When I mentioned that I was reading this, though? Several people came directly for my neck, because apparently reading a book about a public figure means that a reader is a mindless adherent to that person’s political positions and actions, not trying to remain informed about the world and the powerful people within it. Several of those people were Black women. (I’m still pissed about this. I had to delete a whole paragraph of cussing before posting this review.)

And that’s what this book is about, really. Kamala Harris was, and is, expected by the American people to be perfect–not in order to hold office, not to make policy, not to give speeches, but just to be heard. Before the general public would acknowledge her expertise and experience, they demanded a purity of mind, record and ethnicity that nobody else in recent political history has had to produce. To become the president, Kamala would have had to be impossibly pristine.

Trump just had to want to win.

I have low expectations of politicians these days (and back in the day, too, if I’m being honest), and Kamala Harris doesn’t impress me in that arena. But I know she’d be a damn sight better than what we’re dealing with now. What I took from this memoir was not a sense of political superiority or partisan affirmation, or any political reassurances at all. Instead I received a reminder that this is still a country in which I, and people like me(and frankly much better than me) are expected to work very hard, aim very high, just to be allowed in rooms where everyone else is not much more capable or intelligent but is much more male and white. Then, we’re expected to serve everyone in the room tireless and perfectly, only to be crushed if we dare to aspire to the level that we’re capable of, the level that the tenets of our country pretend we can achieve.

You know what? I took this shit personally. If a centrist like VP Harris can break through the glass ceiling only to be encountered by white sheets and flaming crosses on the other side, what hope do I have?

But this is why I read lots of other books and stay firmly grounded in active reality, too.

A box of tissues, a sisterly hug, and a stank look in the direction of the White House over the past ten years to 107 Days.

(Okay so first of all, no I did not link to Hillbilly Elegy up there. All my book links go to the Equal Opportunity Bookshop, and my conscience will not let me make affiliate money off of a book like that. You should totally read the review I did link, though, and also read 107 Days if you want a better understanding of how broken US politics is and how neither side is equipped to seal the break. Guess it’s up to the people, but that’s another blog for another day. Thank you for being here, beautiful people. Now go read something good!)