A moving and engaging reminder that our stories define us.
Short, lyrical segments record the author’s attempts to discover her family’s history after the death of her father.
Children’s author Scruggs (Jump, Rope, Magic, 2000; Journalism/Ohio Wesleyan Univ.) was 15 when her father died in 1980 of lung cancer. She had lost not only a beloved parent but also a priceless resource, she writes: “His death left me without his voice, his words, without the story of his life.” In an investigation that led from relative to relative, from archive to archive, Scruggs attempted to recover the names and stories of people whose lives were shrouded in the wordless history of slavery and Reconstruction. The author grew up in Nashville, and we hear some about her childhood and her education. (She doesn’t exactly come across as modest as she declares herself a “certified genius” and writes about her superior record as a student.) After a B.A. from Chicago and a Ph.D. in Slavic Linguistics from Brown, she decided an academic life was not for her and segued into journalism, where she has remained. At first in desultory fashion and then more systematically, Scruggs began interviewing family members and examining 19th-century property records, where she found the names of her ancestors. Soon, she was even consulting supernatural sources, interpreting dreams and consulting with experts in Nigerian deities and in the Spiritual Baptist movement. She found evidence of some extramarital hanky-panky a generation or so back and discovered the interracial nature of her history, meeting the white family whose ancestors once owned hers and gave it the Scruggs name. At the close, she realizes that all names, including her own, will eventually disappear into the fog of time. Divided into 20 chapters and 2 epilogues, her brief narrative is mostly non-linear, structured by emotion and memory rather than time; readers must relax and float on the subtle currents of her prose.
A moving and engaging reminder that our stories define us.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-26135-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2001
A vivid sequel that strains credulity.
Fremont (After Long Silence, 1999) continues—and alters—her story of how memories of the Holocaust affected her family.
At the age of 44, the author learned that her father had disowned her, declaring her “predeceased”—or dead in his eyes—in his will. It was his final insult: Her parents had stopped speaking to her after she’d published After Long Silence, which exposed them as Jewish Holocaust survivors who had posed as Catholics in Europe and America in order to hide multilayered secrets. Here, Fremont delves further into her tortured family dynamics and shows how the rift developed. One thread centers on her life after her harrowing childhood: her education at Wellesley and Boston University, the loss of her virginity to a college boyfriend before accepting her lesbianism, her stint with the Peace Corps in Lesotho, and her decades of work as a lawyer in Boston. Another strand involves her fraught relationship with her sister, Lara, and how their difficulties relate to their father, a doctor embittered after years in the Siberian gulag; and their mother, deeply enmeshed with her own sister, Zosia, who had married an Italian count and stayed in Rome to raise a child. Fremont tells these stories with novelistic flair, ending with a surprising theory about why her parents hid their Judaism. Yet she often appears insensitive to the serious problems she says Lara once faced, including suicidal depression. “The whole point of suicide, I thought, was to succeed at it,” she writes. “My sister’s completion rate was pathetic.” Key facts also differ from those in her earlier work. After Long Silence says, for example, that the author grew up “in a small city in the Midwest” while she writes here that she grew up in “upstate New York,” changes Fremont says she made for “consistency” in the new book but that muddy its narrative waters. The discrepancies may not bother readers seeking psychological insights rather than factual accuracy, but others will wonder if this book should have been labeled a fictionalized autobiography rather than a memoir.
A vivid sequel that strains credulity.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982113-60-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
Solid, practical advice for women on how to properly nurture their sons.
How women can raise boys to become good men.
More than ever, women are under pressure to be "everything to everyone," writes Meeker (The 10 Habits of Happy Mothers: Reclaiming Our Passion, Purpose, and Sanity, 2010, etc.), as "working women feel that they must perform equally well both in the office and in caring for their home, husband, and children." The dynamics of raising boys is especially difficult for women due to the gender difference and the fact that women tend to be nurturing and helpful while allowing their sons to evolve into men in a constantly shifting masculine paradigm. Through research and interviews from her own practice, Meeker gives women the necessary tools to understand that perfection is not a realistic goal but that doing the best one can will ensure good results. Equally useful to single mothers and women with husbands is the advice that sons need to know they are loved from a very young age, as this builds a foundation of confidence in a child, a base that allows a boy to gradually move away from his mother as he interacts with male peers and elders. A boy's home life must be solid: a safe haven to return to regardless of his age, a place where his thoughts and feelings are respected and where he can express his hopes and dreams without fear of judgment. Meeker recommends introducing boys to religion, prayer and the unconditional love that comes from having a strong faith to boost self-confidence. She also skillfully navigates the world of sex—from a boy's first body awareness to the powerful effects of pornography and sexual messages embedded in social media, video games and news media, to his interactions in the world of girls and women. A mother's imprint on her son is powerful right from birth and remains so throughout her son's life. Meeker's advice gives women the tools to navigate these often rocky waters with confidence.
Solid, practical advice for women on how to properly nurture their sons.Pub Date: April 8, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-345-51809-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
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