A moving, genuinely uplifting tale that highlights how resilient the human spirit can be.
An inspiring true story about the power of hope, optimism, and grit in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.
In his debut, former college basketball player and actor Baruti candidly chronicles his eventful life, from his poverty-laced childhood in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo to his unlikely ascent starring in Guardians of the Galaxy 2. The author begins with some cursory information about his genealogy before plunging into his family’s flight from their home and struggle to survive the horrific violence of civil war, all before the author was 10 years old. When the violence in the country became somewhat tolerable, his family settled in Kinshasa, where Baruti developed an obsession with basketball. He secured a scholarship to a prep school in America, but things went awry due to a self-interested distant cousin in the States, culture shock, an unsympathetic coach, and the ever looming threat of an invalid visa. Suspense builds as Baruti chronicles how he navigated the labyrinthine protocol of U.S. immigration law and the effect it had on his ability to play college basketball in his new home. But that was only one of the many hurdles that could have dashed his dreams at any moment. All of this drama unfolds in short, snappy chapters, and the author’s voice is friendly, clear, and direct. Much of the book centers on his love of basketball, but one needn’t be a sports fan to enjoy the book. Baruti’s optimism is so infectious and believable that readers can’t help but root for him; what may seem like naïve optimism masks an intelligent, steadfast, and defiant unwillingness to give up, no matter the odds. The author suffered countless setbacks on his journey. Consequently, by the time he makes it to Hollywood and lands a small role in a major film, readers will feel a palpable sense of triumph.
A moving, genuinely uplifting tale that highlights how resilient the human spirit can be.Pub Date: May 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6499-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2018
Lionel Dahmer, father of mass murderer Jeffrey Dahmer, here writes one of the most courageous, unsensational books ever written about serial murder. It does not even summarize Jeffrey's crimes. Dahmer takes upon himself much of the guilt for his son's acts by considering a genetic predisposition to murder he may have passed on to his son; various acts of his own moral blindness that may have contributed to his son's deprived emotional being; and things he did and didn't do when certain symptoms appeared that might have alerted him to Jeffrey's lust for sexual atrocity. What parts of the father, the book asks, are replicated in the son? Largely, Jeffrey is a failure whose failings were earlier those of his father, though the father overcame each failing as its pain grew. Intellectually and physically inferior as a child, Lionel was tutored by his parents from first grade on, and by dint of hard study earned a doctorate in chemistry. A puny child, he took up body-building as a teenager and turned himself into a fine physical specimen. But he also had murderous dreams from which he would awake trembling. Jeffrey's mother was also a depressive, and her excessive pill-taking during pregnancy may well have damaged Jeffrey's genes. As a child, he developed a testicular hernia that, when treated by surgery, gave him a fear of castration and seemed to lead into lasting withdrawal from his family and friendships and, by the time he was 15, into alcoholism and a liking for dead things. Lionel sees Jeffrey's main psychotic trigger lying in a need to control: his own need for intellectual and physical control resulted in a glass wall between himself and Jeffrey; Jeffrey's need for control grew into a need for drugged or dead lovers who submitted to him absolutely. Clear, modest, intelligent—and extremely disturbing.
Pub Date: March 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-688-12156-X
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1994
Whether you call this a personal story or nature writing, it’s poignant, thoughtful and moving—and likely to become a...
An inspired, beautiful and absorbing account of a woman battling grief—with a goshawk.
Following the sudden death of her father, Macdonald (History and Philosophy/Cambridge Univ.; Falcon, 2006, etc.) tried staving off deep depression with a unique form of personal therapy: the purchase and training of an English goshawk, which she named Mabel. Although a trained falconer, the author chose a raptor both unfamiliar and unpredictable, a creature of mad confidence that became a means of working against madness. “The hawk was everything I wanted to be: solitary, self-possessed, free from grief, and numb to the hurts of human life,” she writes. As a devotee of birds of prey since girlhood, Macdonald knew the legends and the literature, particularly the cautionary example of The Once and Future King author T.H. White, whose 1951 book The Goshawk details his own painful battle to master his title subject. Macdonald dramatically parallels her own story with White’s, achieving a remarkable imaginative sympathy with the writer, a lonely, tormented homosexual fighting his own sadomasochistic demons. Even as she was learning from White’s mistakes, she found herself very much in his shoes, watching her life fall apart as the painfully slow bonding process with Mabel took over. Just how much do animals and humans have in common? The more Macdonald got to know her, the more Mabel confounded her notions about what the species was supposed to represent. Is a hawk a symbol of might or independence, or is that just our attempt to remake the animal world in our own image? Writing with breathless urgency that only rarely skirts the melodramatic, Macdonald broadens her scope well beyond herself to focus on the antagonism between people and the environment.
Whether you call this a personal story or nature writing, it’s poignant, thoughtful and moving—and likely to become a classic in either genre.Pub Date: March 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0802123411
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2014
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