An often inspiring tribute to the bonds of family and country.
A debut memoir, told from the perspective of a young Pakistani immigrant, that examines the meaning of liberty.
In 1986, 18-year-old Master had spent years planning his trip from Pakistan to the United States; after he finally gets accepted by the University of Texas at Arlington, it seemed that nothing could go wrong for him. What follows is a sometimes-harsh reminder that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side of the fence (or the pond), as the author discusses his initial homesickness and the depression that followed as he struggled to adapt to the Western way of life. However, by studying the failures and successes of some of America’s greatest entrepreneurs, he says, he was able to regain his conviction. Things slowly began to turn around for him, and he got married to an American girl after five years in the United States. Master also decided to convert to Christianity, leaving his family’s Muslim heritage behind. Although he tells of struggling to gain his family’s acceptance of his new religion, he also is careful to emphasize that being American has nothing to do with the church that one attends: “The mission of this book is to communicate that being an American is not about ethnicity, religion, or the color of your skin….It is our shared values and freedoms that make us uniquely American.” Several black-and-white family photos are included throughout as the narrative jumps back and forth between his childhood in Pakistan and his new life in the United States. This alternating narrative structure works surprisingly well, as the shifts allow the reader to compare cultural differences. The author also keenly focuses on what he believes are the “Five Freedoms” that some Americans take for granted: the freedom to fail, the freedom to love, freedom of religion, the freedom to build, and the freedom to self-govern. By considering these, the author hopes to remind readers of the best elements of America.
An often inspiring tribute to the bonds of family and country.Pub Date: July 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64279-285-0
Page Count: 234
Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 23, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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