Finally, Sebba dares to ask why Mother Teresa has been so lionized in the West, suggesting that her apotheosis has much to...
This surprisingly nuanced biography of the international icon of humanitarianism neither shies away from nor revels in controversy.
Sebba, a British journalist and author of a children's book on Mother Teresa, has laced this biography with thought-provoking ethical questions. Though the book jacket promises to reveal "the truth'' about Mother Teresa's friendly relations with the Duvaliers of Haiti, her unscrupulous financial dealings, and other salacious tidbits, the book itself intelligently transcends the genre of the muckraking biography. Part I is a straightforward chronological narrative of Mother Teresa's childhood in Albania, her early association with the Loreto order, and her 1947 exodus from it to found the Missionaries of Charity. Part II outlines some of the criticisms the order has endured in the last decade; political and fiscal dealings aside, some of the most damning charges have been lodged by the international medical community regarding the quality of care provided in Mother Teresa's facilities. Stories of unhygienic conditions abound. One volunteer reported seeing a nurse using the same filthy rag to wipe the bottom of one baby, then the nose of another; the same needles reportedly provide injections to multiple patients; and painkillers are often not prescribed, even to the terminally ill. Sebba probes beneath the surface of these allegations to discover their root in Mother Teresa's theology of suffering. The nun has indicated repeatedly that she finds a redemptive value in suffering, and Sebba sees this as a potentially dangerous sentimentalization. She also discusses Mother Teresa's much-publicized opposition to abortion and contraception, and ultimately concludes that her absolutist stance against contraception makes her social ministries more of a Band-Aid than a cure.
Finally, Sebba dares to ask why Mother Teresa has been so lionized in the West, suggesting that her apotheosis has much to do with assuaging white guilt for India's grinding poverty.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-385-48952-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1997
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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