An absorbing, often perturbing chronicle of a young African- American woman's coming of age. Chambers, a contributing editor of Glamour (and formerly a contributor to Kirkus), offers a revealing glimpse into her youth as an overachiever among adults who dismiss or reject her. (Put into a special class for gifted children, Chambers eagerly reports the news to her mother, who responds with a flat, ``That's nice.'') There is little at first to distinguish her childhood from those of the many children of hard-working families living in Flatbush, Brooklyn, in the 1970s. A secretary, Veronica's mother, a Panamanian immigrant, returns home at day's end with barely enough energy to tend to her two children's needs. But then Chambers's father decides to act on his dream to become ``the first famous black ventriloquist.'' He quits his job, is away for longer and longer periods of time, and finally abandons his wife and children. Things quickly fall apart. The family travels from Brooklyn to Los Angeles's South-Central district and back east. Chambers decides to live with her father when it becomes evident that her new stepfather cannot tolerate her. In a chilling series of episodes Chambers describes her stepmother's abuse and her father's remoteness. Despite her suffering, Chambers's mother never asks her to return home, though she does talk to her daughter almost every day. Admission to a private college in New England becomes the ambitious girl's salvation, and once on her own, she finds a way to reconcile with her mother. ``In my mother's arms,'' she says, ``I found healing.'' The author's brother does not fare as well, slipping into a hard, dangerous life on the streets. This provocative memoir is valuable not only as a family chronicle, but as a commentary on growing up African-American and on the complex feelings that assail those who leave poverty behind and move into the middle class. (Book-of-the-Month Club alternate selection; first serial to Glamour; author tour)
Pub Date: June 18, 1996
ISBN: 1-57322-030-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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.
