Another treatment of the extended Obama family that enlightens and deepens the public’s understanding of the president.
A burnished look at a difficult, ruptured childhood in Kenya by the president’s half sister, older by one year.
Unlike David Maraniss’ comprehensive biography of the president (Barack Obama: The Story, 2012), which does not sugarcoat the problematic father the president and Auma shared, this delicate, emotional work sidesteps the patriarch in order to portray a young woman deeply resentful of the sexist treatment of women in her Luo culture and determined to forge her own identity. Auma is the daughter of Barack Obama Sr.’s first wife, Kezia, who was essentially abandoned pregnant with Auma at the family compound while her husband pursued a scholarship program at the University of Hawaii. Much happened while her father went on to graduate studies in economics at Harvard, namely his marriage to Stanley Ann Dunham and the birth of Barack Obama Jr., divorce and remarriage to another young white American woman, Ruth Baker, who then followed Barack back to Nairobi and became the third wife and awkward stepmother to Auma and her older brother, Abongo. Deprived of her biological mother, Auma found in the rigors and routine of her schools a reprieve from a bleak home life that comprised an “oppressive emptiness” resulting from her father’s eventual divorce from Ruth. Her father’s demise, caused by the loss of a government finance job and debilitating car accidents (Auma blames them on political intrigue, Maraniss on his drinking), strained her relationship with him to such an extent that she did not seek his permission to travel as an exchange student in Germany. Auma became a proficient student of German, and her meeting with her brother Barack in Chicago in 1984 marks the brightest moment in this eager-to-please work. The meeting paved the way for his subsequent trips to Kenya and warmly unfolding relationship with his African family.
Another treatment of the extended Obama family that enlightens and deepens the public’s understanding of the president.Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-250-01005-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: March 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2012
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
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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