Heartfelt essays from vibrant American voices.
Writers from diverse ethnic backgrounds ring in on American identity.
Actor and activist Ferrera makes her book debut as editor of this collection of spunky, fresh, and often moving personal essays responding to the question: What do I call an American like me? Because she grew up believing she was “alone in feeling stuck between cultures,” Ferrera sees the book as a way to foster a sense of belonging as well as to celebrate difference. “We live as citizens of a country that does not always claim us or even see us,” she writes, “and yet, we continue to build, to create, and to compel it toward its own promise.” That promise beckoned many writers’ parents or grandparents to make an arduous journey to a new homeland. “For my family,” writes Olympic figure skater Michelle Kwan, “the American dream wasn’t just a fairy-tale notion or a meaningless phrase. It has always been real and extremely motivating.” Hoping for a bright future for themselves and their children, Kwan’s parents left China, arriving in the U.S. penniless and knowing no English but certain that “if you work hard and take big risks for what you believe in, you can accomplish anything.” They sacrificed time and money to support Kwan’s passion for ice skating. Other writers include comedians Al Madrigal and Kumail Nanjiani, cookbook author and TV host Padma Lakshmi, transgender advocate Geena Rocero, NBA player Jeremy Lin, actor and documentary filmmaker Ravi Patel, gymnast Laurie Hernandez, and composer and playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda. Some, bullied and mocked as children, wanted to blend into white America, begging for white-bread sandwiches rather than curry in their lunchboxes. Others flaunted their difference. Growing up in Houston, actress Liza Koshy liked “being racially ambiguous. Forever the ethnically mysterious little brown girl.” She saw her Asian and Latino friends not as a melting pot but a salad bowl, “tossed haphazardly together” to produce “something delicious,” each contributing a “special flavor or texture.”
Heartfelt essays from vibrant American voices.Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-8091-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
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
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