A well-researched memoir, historical survey, and spiritual guidebook.
Walter outlines the benefits of dance meditation and Zen Buddhism for Black cancer patients in this nonfiction book.
American culture and racism, argues Walter, combine in a toxic mixture that impacts the health and well-being of Black Americans. Per the author, the United States fosters a culture of greed and anger as racism simultaneously “tears and shatters” the “dreams and hopes” of Black communities. Born in Los Angeles, Walter experienced racism firsthand in both subtle and overt ways. Her mother was born in segregated Oklahoma, and her father was killed by a police officer when she was 12 years old. After receiving her doctorate degree in dance history and theory from the University of California, Riverside, she often found herself marginalized in higher education’s predominantly white spaces. In this genre-blending work, the author tells her personal story within the larger context of American history, eventually centering her experiences with Zen Buddhism. (The historic overview of racism in America is combined with the story of Zen Buddhism’s arrival in 19th-century California, via Chinese immigrants.) Walter was engaged with Christianity throughout much of her life, serving as a deaconess in church. Unfulfilled by her religion and angered by the weight of racism on her life, she experimented with other spiritual systems (including Kabbalah), eventually finding her way to California’s Tassajara Zen Monastery. It was there that she discovered the salve to her lifetime of anger and spiritual hunger: “I’ve learned about how the self and its ego are sources of suffering for people of color, and about releasing ourselves and others from it through Zen Buddhism,” she writes.
This poignant, historically grounded look at American racism offers a valuable perspective on the intersection of race, gender, and healthcare in American history. In addition to providing memoir material and social commentary, the work also serves as a primer on Zen Buddhist teachings and meditation techniques. (The author discusses Zen Buddhism’s role in helping her navigate her diagnosis with multiple myeloma, a type of bone marrow cancer.) While delivering a searing indictment of the ways in which the U.S. healthcare system treats Black women, Walter emphasizes how her involvement with Dance Meditation (a technique long practiced by Tibetan Buddhists) has helped her confront illness, death, and worldly priorities. The text details dance moves accompanied by photographs demonstrating various steps. The practice of Kinhin (meditative walking) is framed by the author as “a mindful dance”; she offers readers a step-by-step guide to feet alignment, body positions, and steps. The work’s final chapter provides sample daily routines that highlight the meditative discipline of Zazen and includes specific recitations (such as a “Loving Kindness Meditation”) and mantras (“I take refuge in buddha / Before all beings”). Accessible to readers without any background in Buddhist philosophy, the volume also reflects the academic background of the author, who supports her arguments with endnotes and a scholarly bibliography. While the book’s title targets Black cancer patients, the work is broadly applicable to anyone looking to improve their physical health and wellbeing.
A well-researched memoir, historical survey, and spiritual guidebook.Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781476697345
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Toplight Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
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