A moving, inspirational story that makes a powerful argument for sentencing reform.
A freed federal prisoner recounts how she got in—and out.
Johnson was born in Mississippi, one of nine children who lived in a sharecropper’s shack: “No matter where I was situated,” she writes, “I couldn’t toss or turn. We fit snugly together and dared not move until the next day, when the sun’s rays came through the poorly insulated windows and warmed us.” Her parents aspired to better things, though, and having secretly built a home in a town 10 miles away—secretly to avoid angering the white farm owner in those last days of Jim Crow—they moved. Johnson was a motivated, smart student who got pregnant as a sophomore in high school; she kept up with her education all the same, eventually getting a job as a secretary. A too-good-to-be-true scenario unfolded when she was recruited to act as a relayer of messages between customers and a drug ring—and then was arrested in a major sting operation. “I didn’t know this at the time,” she writes, “but whenever someone is up on drug charges, cooperating witnesses frequently jump in on that case to reduce their own sentences.” Promoted from go-between to ringleader as a result of others’ testimony, Johnson was sentenced, under mandatory guidelines, to life in a federal penitentiary—first California, meaning that her family could not afford to visit, and later in Texas and Alabama. She made good use of her prison time, writing religious plays, being cheerfully helpful, and steering clear of trouble—all qualities that helped bring her case to the attention of Kim Kardashian, who in turn put her husband, Kanye West, on it, using his connections: “I know Kanye had opened the door for my release through his support of President Trump.” Freed last year after serving “twenty-one years, seven months and six days,” she has since become an advocate for prisoners’ rights, “fighting for those I left behind.”
A moving, inspirational story that makes a powerful argument for sentencing reform.Pub Date: May 21, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-293610-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2019
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
PERSPECTIVES
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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