An impressively forthcoming yet idiosyncratic recollection.
In this memoir, a man remembers an emotionally turbulent childhood and the long shadow it cast over his adult life.
Cocorocchio grew up in postwar Italy during the 1950s and ’60s in Sant’Elia Fiumerapido, not far from Rome, his world infused with the traumas of the suffering nation, a ruined cosmos sensitively described. The author and his family contended with austere financial hardship. They all lived in a two-room apartment that didn’t even have running water, forcing them to retrieve it from a fountain outside. Cocorocchio wilted both under the mercurial anger of his father and the guilt trips of his mother, the “Queen of Martyrs.” The author’s parents finally moved to Canada in 1964—his father was motivated less by an aspiration than a “deep desire to leave” Italy. But that fresh start did little to alleviate the perennial tension between Cocorocchio and his parents, an emotional conflict that burdened him his entire life but that he didn’t fully confront until he was a grown man: “I must have been in my forties when I first became aware of the yearning that had been festering inside me my whole life. A pining for some lost opportunity—to have been stillborn, and for my mother to have died while giving birth to me.” The author chronicles his story with admirable, even courageous candor—besides poverty and familial conflicts, he endured sexual abuse as a child, a string of failed marriages as an adult, and the heartbreaking loss of a daughter to cancer. But this is a deeply personal memoir, an emotionally painful chronicle that seems intended for those in Cocorocchio’s circle of friends and family; the remembrance concludes with a brief commentary from a psychiatrist. As intelligent and frank as this book genuinely is, it is too narrow to appeal to a broad readership.
An impressively forthcoming yet idiosyncratic recollection.Pub Date: March 17, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-03-913747-9
Page Count: 228
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
An engaging, revealing look at the wild world of the Wu-Tang Clan and beyond.
A memoir from one of hip-hop’s most inventive stylists.
As a member of the Wu-Tang Clan and throughout his solo career, Dennis Coles (b. 1970), aka Ghostface Killah, has been one of the most creative rappers in the game. In this deeply personal text, the author narrates his life story through 15 of his songs. It’s a testament to the richness of his rhymes to see him communicate the same thoughts and feelings in a handful of couplets as he does in a full chapter of prose. Sure, Ghostface offers more context and details in each chapter, whether he’s writing about the struggles of his youth that inspired “All That I Got Is You” or his time selling drugs in “Poisonous Darts,” but that is also a little too straightforward for such a creative artist. Ghostface occasionally uses graphic-novel techniques to make some points, and he turns over the narrative to friends and colleagues to make others. There is no sanitizing of his history here. Ghostface is frank about his drug use, his arrests and time in jail, and his health issues—especially how his diabetes can affect his performances and creativity. He also takes time to educate people about the problems in the music industry, what Islam means to his life and his art, and the impact of slavery and racism on hip-hop and America. “My ancestors used to get whipped, and the rest of the slaves had to sit out there and watch them get whipped until they died,” he writes. “When I watched George Floyd die, it felt like that.” His expansive thoughts on any number of topics are fascinating whether you follow hip-hop or not. The book is vividly designed, featuring pull quotes, sidebars, and color photos.
An engaging, revealing look at the wild world of the Wu-Tang Clan and beyond.Pub Date: May 14, 2024
ISBN: 9781250274274
Page Count: 240
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2024
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