A tribute to the remarkable strength of a family in the face of disaster.
A potently straightforward account of how Brooke Ellison managed to attend a mainstream public school and graduate from Harvard after being struck by a car and paralyzed from the neck down at age 11.
Unfolding the story in alternating chapters, Brooke and her mother, Jean, begin their account the day of the accident, Brooke’s first day of junior high school. Brooke was expected to die from her injuries; her spinal cord was severed and she was in a coma for days. When she regained consciousness, she had lost all control of her body from the neck down, but her parents were determined to give their child as normal a life as possible. That meant finding a way for Brooke to attend the local public school. In what would come to be standard practice in the Ellison household, Jean accompanied her daughter to school when adequate nursing wasn’t available. Mother saw daughter through junior high and high school, and when Brooke was accepted to Harvard, the two moved to Cambridge together. Employing a matter-of-fact tone, mother and daughter run through the challenges faced over the years: grappling with a school board unwilling to provide aides, finding ways to study when Brooke could not write, or turn the pages of a book, dealing with the awkwardness of Brooke’s longing for a romantic connection while she was imprisoned in a body that would not respond and had to be monitored at all times by her mother. The story’s power does not come from its style or elegance or the philosophizing of the Ellison women—although they surely were strengthened by their faith—but from the revelation of just how compromised a quadriplegic body is and how much dedication and strength of mind are necessary to get that body through a normal day.
A tribute to the remarkable strength of a family in the face of disaster.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7868-6770-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2001
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
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
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