A lovingly assembled tribute to an artist whose literary gifts complemented her musical ones.
A diverse collection of personal and journalistic writings from the late folk singer.
To the music world, Mary Travers (1936-2009) is best known as one-third of Peter, Paul and Mary, the popular 1960s folk-singing act. Their recordings of “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Puff, the Magic Dragon” were the soundtrack of a generation in transition. But most audiences may not be aware of Travers’ talent as a keen, observant writer. This new collection of writings, published five years after her death, showcases that side of her through eloquent essays (some previously unpublished), columns she wrote for the Bucks County (Pa.) Courier Times in the 1980s, and several poems. It’s neither a straightforward memoir nor an in-depth chronicle of her success in Peter, Paul and Mary; rather, each chapter is devoted to a particular theme. It begins poignantly with Travers’ reminiscences of growing up in New York City and her friendship with an African-American maid who became like a second mother to her. Next, she offers insightful wisdom about the art of singing and the ins and outs of the music business (“Managers, agents, lawyers have hostile attitudes toward artists. Most of them think that the artists are ding-dongs,” she writes). Another chapter features her writings about her political views and activism, through her travels to the Philippines, the Soviet Union and South Korea during the 1980s (“I spoke; I sang out against oppression; I got involved”). Among the book’s highlights are transcriptions of interviews Travers conducted as host of her own radio program in the 1970s with Bob Dylan, Richie Havens and the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia. Although the book tackles some serious subjects—including an illegal abortion Travers had at a young age, and the poverty she witnessed in the Philippines—it also reveals her humorous side, particularly through her onstage monologues. On the topic of growing old, she says, “I am technologically challenged....I’m the kind of person when it doesn’t work, I kick it.” Overall, the book presents a portrait of someone who was relatable and down-to-earth. “There was much more to Mary than the public ever knew,” writes her friend and bandmate Peter Yarrow in the book’s foreword. Fortunately, through this collection, the world will now have the opportunity to know Travers as more than just a folk singer.
A lovingly assembled tribute to an artist whose literary gifts complemented her musical ones.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1492871293
Page Count: 222
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 25, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
