A survivor presents a doggedly optimistic view of life and a collection of valuable lessons.
A debut autobiographical work offers a series of life lessons.
“I am a proud survivor,” writes Shaw at the beginning of her book, “having endured some of the worst traumas a person can face.” She has dealt with the loss of a parent, a cancer diagnosis, the trauma of rape, the death of her first love, a divorce, some near-death accidents, and chronic health problems, among other trials. In her chapters, she takes readers through the narration of her autobiography, from her childhood bond with her vivacious sister to her college years, cancer diagnosis, and the ordeal of chemotherapy (“It was a war and I felt like the enemy got the best of me more than once”). She recounts her recovery, graduation, pregnancy, and other events into later adulthood. Looking back at it all, she tells her readers that God is teaching people and giving them skills they can use when encountering adversities. In her own case, she writes, she became “a keeping the faith, on top of the world, utopian optimist survivor fashioned with rose-colored glasses.” Shaw’s decision to ground her motivational insights in stories from her own autobiography is a wise narrative decision; it puts an appealingly personal face on the hardships from which she’s drawn her life lessons. Her prose style is direct and energetic. Every period of her life, each with its own trauma, is narrated with a spirited immediacy—her accounts of her cancer and divorce are particularly effective. The downside of this immediacy is that it sometimes tempts the author to indulge in purple prose (“I was a changed woman with a devastating scar on her unsuspecting heart”). Still, the useful nuggets of advice woven into this uplifting narrative more than compensate.
A survivor presents a doggedly optimistic view of life and a collection of valuable lessons.Pub Date: March 7, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-956769-07-4
Page Count: 245
Publisher: Library Tales Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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