Greer’s mellifluous work should introduce her to new readers.
A lyrical, mannered memoir in which the American-British playwright and novelist returns to the South Side of Chicago, where she grew up in the 1950s and ’60s in a poor, segregated neighborhood.
Most of Greer’s work (Langston Hughes: the Value of Contradiction, 2011, etc.) was produced after her move to England in 1986 and thus is not well-known on this side of the Atlantic. In her beautifully wrought yet occasionally meandering narrative, the author taps back into the poor, hardworking spirit of her parents, very much the products of the Great Migration from the South after the turn of the century, and the rampant and stifling discrimination that also prevailed in Chicago as she grew up. She writes poignantly of her factory-worker father, who was raised in Jim Crow Mississippi only to endure the added humiliation of serving in the Army during World War II when German prisoners of war were treated better than black servicemen; and her light-skinned mother, self-described as “a little piece of leather that’s well put together,” who became a housewife and bore seven children—Greer being the eldest. They were working poor, able to attend Catholic school and move to a house of their own on the South Side. Observing her beautiful mother exhausted and restricted to the home gave Greer a good idea of what she did not want to do with her life. She tried studying law and was always writing, but she did not have the confidence to assert herself during the tumultuous period of her university years in Chicago, when Black Power was gathering strength. She had affairs with professors and white men and found a family among a welcoming gay community she calls “the Boys.” She ends with her move to New York City at age 30.
Greer’s mellifluous work should introduce her to new readers.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1909807624
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Dufour
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
