Naître à soi, by Elladj Lincy Deloumeaux © The artist. Courtesy Galerie Cécile Fakhoury, Paris

In The Year of Living Dangerously, the actress Linda Hunt puts on an unforgettable performance as Billy Kwan, a mixed-race, male photojournalist distraught by the poverty and despair in Indonesia in 1965. Repeatedly, with ever greater distress, Kwan cries out, “What then must we do?” A question no less urgent here and now.

Jesse McCarthy’s remarkable book of essays Who Will Pay Reparations on My Soul? (Liveright, $27.95) represents one young black intellectual’s experience grappling with this question over the better part…