by Kristen Henderson Sarah Kate Ellis ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 2011
A spirited portrait of an unconventional family.
An unexpected double pregnancy surprises and challenges a publishing executive and her rock-guitarist girlfriend.
The importance of starting a family became paramount for Ellis, vice president of marketing for Real Simple, and her girlfriend Henderson shortly after the New York couple met at a Manhattan lesbian bar in the mid ’90s and began a relationship after reuniting there years later. Ellis recalls growing up business-minded at a young age, eager and determined to leave her Staten Island roots. Once her career took off, however, she struggled with the constant cloaking of her sexuality. Henderson was drawn to music early and enjoyed forming girl bands in high school. She experienced a Lilith Fair performance in college and, together with all-girl rock band Antigone Rising, was signed by a major label in 2003. Both writers braved a series of unsound lesbian relationships before embarking on their own together. Soon committed to each other and carefully contemplating their future—Ellis in New York nurturing her publishing career, Henderson on the road with her band—talk of children surfaced as both yearned for a child. The authors describe their misadventures in ovulation cycles, sperm donors and the clinical insemination process, which was decidedly unromantic and highly stressful as false positives and a heartbreaking miscarriage crushed their hopes. With determination and the aid of medical science, both conceived simultaneously. After the births, they faced complex legalities regarding adoption and religion. Ellis warns: “When you’re a gay woman contemplating motherhood, you will be affected by politics—whether you like it or not.” Undaunted, Ellis and Henderson remain bright, engaging narrators, each evoking separate histories and private sentiments in alternating chapters that differentiate and complement each other. The book is dedicated to their children Thomas and Kate, “our perfect storm.”
A spirited portrait of an unconventional family.Pub Date: April 5, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4391-7640-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2011
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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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