Impressive, moving, and refreshingly free of sentimentality and self-pity.
Vivid, brisk account of a young German woman’s efforts to establish a school for the blind in Tibet.
Diagnosed with retinal disease in early childhood and completely blind by 13, the author retains visual memories that help her navigate sightlessly. Tenberken still sees colors in her mind and uses them as a mnemonic device to remember phone numbers and formulas and to visualize landscapes and her surroundings. She also has remarkable parents who have encouraged her independence and sense of adventure—at one point her mother even helped out at the school in Lhasa. Tenberken, who did graduate work in Asian studies, describes how her obsession with Tibetan manuscripts led her to devise a Tibetan Braille alphabet so that she could read texts herself. In the late 1990s, needing more freedom and tired of being reminded of her supposed limitations, she flew alone to China and then traveled by road (an exhausting experience) to Lhasa, where she was determined to found a school. There were no training facilities for blind children; if their parents were poor, they were left on the streets or alone in their rooms without any teaching, diversions, or stimulation. An accomplished horsewoman, the author recalls often hazardous journeys on horseback over some of the most mountainous terrain in the world to find pupils. She describes her efforts to raise funds, to get official Chinese permission for her school, and to find suitable premises and staff. None of it was easy, but the school eventually opened and was an instant success. Then the funding dried up due to bureaucratic bungling back in Germany, her venal landlords evicted her, and the government insisted she leave the country immediately. Though discouraged, Tenberken rallied her forces and, after a tortuous overland journey to Nepal and a visit to Germany, found ways to continue her work.
Impressive, moving, and refreshingly free of sentimentality and self-pity.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2003
ISBN: 1-55970-658-9
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2002
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
© 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
