A better-than-average up-from-the-ghetto, as-told-to life story by the R&B diva. Born Jamesetta Hawkins in 1938 in Los Angeles, her remarkable voice won her a featured soloist spot at the local church when she was just a child, and she'd barely hit her teens when she was discovered by L.A. promoter/songwriter Johnny Otis, a Greek man whose soul ``was blacker than the blackest black in Compton.'' Otis gave Etta her stage name and oversaw the recording of her first hit: ``Roll With Me, Henry,'' a double-entendre answer song to the Hank Ballard hit, ``Work With Me, Annie.'' From there, she hit the road, mostly playing small southern towns where she encountered racism at every turn. Her pungent observations about her peers make for amusing reading: Little Richard ``called himself King Richard and would get mad if you didn't recognize his royalty''; James Brown was ``a little dictator, an arrogant lord over the world of his music''; Jackie Wilson ``was incapable of talking about anything but Jackie.'' James also chronicles her regrettable talent for selecting men who used her at best, physically abused her at worst, and an addiction to heroin and other drugs that took her decades to shake. Musically speaking, James's life has also been one of ups and downs. Never quite achieving mainstream success, she moved from pure R&B to light jazz, pop standards, and out-and-out rock 'n' roll in the late '60s and '70s, then returned to form as a funky blues shouter in the '80s. James is well served by coauthor Ritz (Take It Off, Take It All Off, 1993, etc.), who ably captures the singer's feisty tone and does a reasonable job of keeping the narrative moving along. Not exactly an uplifting story, but plenty of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll to keep the fans happy. (8 pages b&w photos, not seen) (Author tour)
Pub Date: June 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-42328-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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