Memories of and musings on the relationships between women, from novelist Peterson (Duck and Cover, 1991, etc.). Sisters are the focus of this memoir cum study—the author's two biological sisters, Paula and Marla, her extended sisterhood of women friends, and even the nonhuman sisters she finds in a dolphin pod or a herd of elephants. Peterson searches wide and deep within her own past and those of others to fill in her complex picture of sisterhood. These relationships often involve caregiving—Marla and Paula are nurses, whereas the author, the eldest sister, has adopted the role of family nurturer—but they can be hurtful as well. Peterson devotes one chapter to the breakup of a friendship with one of her ``chosen'' sisters, a cruel and arbitrary rift that she still doesn't understand, though several years have passed. Peterson also describes how she and her sisters were abused throughout their childhood by their mother. On the other hand, she is exclusive of men but for the most part nonbelligerent toward them. Her father was largely absentee, while her younger brother, the father of four girls, is comfortable with women and women's bonds. A few of Peterson's stories and characters stand out: Paula's neurosurgery and how her sisters coaxed her back from a coma; the Crones, a group of postmenopausal women who share the secrets of aging and companionship with great good humor and sensitivity; and a raucous slumber party for women well beyond adolescence. Other pieces are less successful, and finding out that Peterson is bisexual two-thirds through the book, one feels at first betrayed, as if the preceding ruminations on sisterhood have become retroactively incestuous. (For more on this topic, see Sister to Sister, edited by Patricia Foster, p. 1467.) But despite this unwonted secrecy and the book's New Age tinge, this is clearly a labor of love that is both thoughtful and touching.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-670-85296-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlanticsenior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A powerful voice on behalf of young people who should not be stigmatized but need support from schools and communities to...
An unvarnished account of one woman's painful “journey from victim to survivor,” as she came to understand the “dynamics of commercial sexual exploitation, especially child sex trafficking.”
In this debut, Smith, a public advocate for trafficking victims, begins in 1992 with her own experience. At the age of 14, she was briefly a prostitute before being rescued by the police. Since she was manipulated rather than subjected to violence, she was shamed by the false belief that she had chosen to be a prostitute. Only in 2009, three years after her marriage, did she feel able to reveal her story and give testimony before Congress. She blames the media for objectifying sexuality and creating an environment in which an estimated 100,000 in the U.S. are victimized annually. Smith describes how one afternoon, she was walking through the mall when a young man approached her. They flirted briefly, and he slipped her his phone number, asking her to get in touch. She describes her vulnerability to his approach. She was socially insecure. Both of her parents were alcoholics, and before the age of 10, she had been repeatedly abused sexually by a cousin. In her eagerness to have a boyfriend, she responded to his come-on and agreed to a meeting. As it turned out, he was profiling her for a pimp, and it was the pimp who met her—accompanied by a prostitute, there to show her the ropes. Their approach was nonthreatening, and they suggested that, in the future, she might have a career in modeling. Many unhappy children, writes the author, “are lured into trusting their traffickers” due to their lack of self-esteem. In the aftermath of the experience, although she finished college and had a successful career, Smith struggled with depression and substance abuse.
A powerful voice on behalf of young people who should not be stigmatized but need support from schools and communities to protect them from predators.Pub Date: March 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-137-27873-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2014
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