A well-written, profoundly empathetic memoir from an entrepreneur with a very bright future.
An award-winning Black designer, entrepreneur, and activist reflects on her past accomplishments and future ambitions.
James has found success in a variety of ways: designer of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s iconic “Tax the Rich” dress for the 2021 Met Gala; founder of the Fifteen Percent Pledge, an organization that calls on corporations to donate 15% of their “shelf space” to Black-owned businesses; and winner of the Council of Fashion Designers of America/Vogue Fashion Fund Award for her company, Brother Vellies. In her debut memoir, the author chronicles her happy childhood growing up with her Ghanaian father and ethnically ambiguous mother, who was “adopted as an infant and never knew anything about her biological parents.” During her early years, James thrived under her grandmother’s loving care, but then her mother married a physically abusive man who also sexually assaulted James. “I did not tell my mother what he had done to me at that time because I already knew that she was battling for her life,” writes the author. While both women eventually escaped the abuse, the marriage significantly damaged James’ relationship with her mother. At the same time, it “allowed me to believe that I could forge my own path.” Traveling to Africa, she learned how to make shoes at workshops in places like Namibia, South Africa, and Kenya and how to combine her creativity and fashion sense to found her company. Ultimately, the author’s world travels and keen sense of justice led her to not only business success, but also social justice activism, which has informed her production models and her philanthropic involvement with Black Lives Matter and other movements. Throughout the text, James is vulnerable and frank, cultivating a narrative voice that is both intimate and captivating; on the line level, her language is impressively lyrical.
A well-written, profoundly empathetic memoir from an entrepreneur with a very bright future.Pub Date: May 9, 2023
ISBN: 9780593239452
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
There’s an abundance of love and gratitude in this wildly entertaining, utterly charming memoir.
A look at the life of one of pop music’s most enduring stars.
Pop star and American Idol judge Richie opens his memoir with an account of his 2015 appearance at the Glastonbury Festival in England, where more than 175,000 people gathered to watch him perform some of his many hit singles. The singer reacts with disbelief to the crowd’s enthusiasm: “Did I dream all of this up? If not, I mean—How in the world did this even happen?” His book, marked with wide-eyed disbelief about his own success, aims to answer that question. Richie movingly tells the story of his childhood in his “forever home” of Tuskegee, Alabama; he was a “painfully, awkwardly, horribly shy” boy who struggled with anxiety and undiagnosed ADHD. While a student at Tuskegee Institute, he joined the funk band the Commodores, who in short order became a sensation, playing residencies at Smalls Paradise in Harlem and opening for the Jackson 5 on tour. With no small amount of gentle self-deprecation, Richie writes about his hit singles with the band, including “Easy” and “Three Times a Lady.” He left the band in 1982 and embarked on his solo career, which saw him take the top of the charts with songs including “You Are,” “All Night Long,” and “Hello,” which cemented his status as a worldwide icon. Richie’s book is infused with gratitude; while the reader gets the sense that he is aware of his talent, there is nothing in the book that comes off as bragging, and he still seems star-struck when writing about celebrity friends such as Stevie Wonder and Gregory Peck. Richie is refreshingly open in the book, which functions as both a fun memoir and a love letter to music and his beloved Tuskegee.
There’s an abundance of love and gratitude in this wildly entertaining, utterly charming memoir.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2025
ISBN: 9780063253643
Page Count: 496
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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