A generous biographer, Clinton sometimes accepts too uncritically the many legends that proliferate in the fertile Tubman...
Well-written bio of the former slave who became an engineer on the Underground Railroad, a loyal supporter of John Brown, a Civil War nurse and spy, and a fiery advocate for women’s suffrage.
Less hobbled by academic conventions than Kate Clifford Larson’s recent Bound for the Promised Land (p. 1262), this new account of “the Black Moses” trots along at a brisk pace. Clinton (Civil War Stories, 1998, etc.) begins in 1908, when the elderly Tubman appears at the opening in Auburn, New York, of the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged and Indigent, her last great public endeavor. (She died five years later—the year Rosa Parks was born.) The author then takes us back to the Eastern Shore of antebellum Maryland, where Araminta Ross, as Tubman was then called, was born sometime between 1815 and 1825. Like all biographers of slaves, Clinton could consult only a slim file on her subject’s early years; documentation is particularly scant in Tubman’s case because a courthouse fire in the 1850s destroyed important papers. The author assiduously paints the region’s cultural background and helps us imagine Tubman maturing within it, but is nonetheless forced to make frequent use of phrases like “little is known” and such words as “perhaps.” Clinton persists, giving more or less authentic accounts of Harriet’s childhood, her marriage to John Tubman (who did not flee the South with her), her escape to Canada, her numerous and increasingly dangerous returns to help free relatives and others, her rise to prominence in the Underground Railroad, her service to the Union in the Civil War (it took years to extract a $20 monthly pension from the government for her efforts), her many speaking appearances (she was by all accounts a stunning performer), her struggles to support herself and those who relied on her.
A generous biographer, Clinton sometimes accepts too uncritically the many legends that proliferate in the fertile Tubman soil. Still: a clear, concise portrait of “Moses” in her milieux. (8 pp. b&w photos, not seen)Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2004
ISBN: 0-316-14492-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2003
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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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