by Joyce Brabner ; illustrated by Mark Zingarelli ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 18, 2014
The art of cartoonist Zingarelli underscores the tone of the text.
A graphic memoir detailing a pot-dealing scheme that helped finance treatment for those dying from AIDS in the early days before the epidemic even had that name.
Both the title and the format suggest the humorous spirit of irreverence, though the subject is deadly serious. The author and the male nurse who is the protagonist were part of “a small tight-knit outsider community” in New York City at a time when AIDS was mainly a scary rumor and the entire cultural context was different. “So what’s the difference between a comic book and a graphic novel?” one of the group asked Brabner, wife of the late Harvey Pekar, whose deadpan, matter-of-fact sensibility she seems to share. “One is spaghetti. Sometimes Spaghettios. The other is pasta,” she replied. During a period when gay life was marginalized and grant money went elsewhere, a small conspiracy decided to fund itself through “the Colombian Arts Council Grant,” a euphemism for smuggling high-grade marijuana for profits that could subsidize live performances and other art projects. Yet with the emergence of the virus, the profits started to serve a different purpose: to buy and smuggle different drugs, illegal and experimental but available in Mexico. So much was trial and error back then, the testing and the treatment, that much of what they brought back was more short-term benefit than long-term cure. “We sold weed at premium prices to the healthy to support our friends however we could,” writes the author. “And gave it away free to the sick. It helped with the pain and nausea.” The Robin Hood band proved to be the vanguard in a battle that belatedly received mainstream support, not only because it was too widespread to ignore, but “because somebody’s starting to realize this isn’t just a queer disease.” But this is a story of early warning, recognition and action.
The art of cartoonist Zingarelli underscores the tone of the text.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-0809035533
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Hill and Wang/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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
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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 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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