An intriguing but incomplete outsider’s tale of lethal ambition.
The trials of a young woman interning on Wall Street.
Godiwalla reveals what initially drove her from the suburbs of Houston to seek her fortune in one of the most high-stress, male-dominated work environments on the planet. The third child in a family of exceptionally bright, hardworking daughters, Godiwalla was raised by her first-generation Persian-Indian parents with the expectation that she would excel in school. Wishing to distinguish herself from her sisters, the author looked to Wall Street as the sole means to earning her father’s respect: “I became fixated on the idea that money would not only allow me to live by my own rules but also, down the road, win the love of my father, who was still in awe of the American dream—wealth and prestige.” And so the straight-A student set off for Wall Street, becoming the sole freshman from the University of Texas to undertake a summer internship at JP Morgan, where she quickly learned to lose “anything Southern or middle class.” Undaunted by the exclusive world of finance, Godiwalla returned to New York City the summer of her junior year to participate in Morgan Stanley’s highly selective Scholars program for minorities, which gave her access to the ultra-elite, high-powered world of Corporate Finance along with a six-figure salary to help pay off her student loans. It was here that the author found the horrifyingly sexist and classist environment untenably soul numbing. As with many tales of personal reformation, the real story—how Godiwalla walked away from Wall Street and eventually achieved her other dream of getting married—remains unexplored and is only hinted at in the end papers.
An intriguing but incomplete outsider’s tale of lethal ambition.Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-934633-95-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atlas & Co.
Review Posted Online: Dec. 29, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2011
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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