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36 VIEWS OF MOUNT FUJI

Name: 36 VIEWS OF MOUNT FUJI
Author: Cathy N. Davidson
ISBN: 0-525-93707-2

ON FINDING MYSELF IN JAPAN

by Cathy N. Davidson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 7, 1993

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Travel memoir about the author's four trips to Japan that grows like a novel and takes on unusual richness as it keeps reinvesting itself in earlier scenes and people. Davidson (English/Duke; co-ed., The Last Tradition, 1980, etc.) and her husband, Ted, first moved to Osaka in 1980 to teach at ``Kansai Women's University'' (a fictional composite), where she instructed a class in spoken English. Despite trying several times, the author never did master Japanese—though it must be said that, in turn, most of her Japanese students seemed to have learned an artificial English that has little tie to own. Davidson writes about almost nothing for itself alone but, rather, for its emotional impact on her, and nearly all the people she describes here are composites who become vehicles of feeling. She writes this way because the Japanese usually hide their deeper feelings, and those she knows personally would be embarrassed by appearing recognizably on these pages—especially being portrayed in exactly the emotional states they usually cover over most carefully. These novelistic devices, along with the way the Davidsons' visits to Japan gather depth of feeling, lend her account a personal quality all her own—and may give it a longer life than most travel memoirs. Davidson reveals little new about the Japanese, but what she makes clear are the shame and humiliation she most commonly feels with her students, fellow Japanese teachers, Japanese friends, and street people, all of whom see her as gaijin (foreigner) and cry out ``Speak no Engrish!'' (Perhaps because of this humiliation, the Davidsons, rather than settle down in Japan, finally build a Japanese house in North Carolina). Over the ten years covered, many deaths occur, especially in the final pages, which adds a memorable darkening to the text. Top-drawer. (Eighteen line drawings)

Pub Date: Oct. 7, 1993

ISBN: 0-525-93707-2

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Dutton

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1993

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NEW EDUCATION
by Cathy N. Davidson

- BOOK REVIEW
NOW YOU SEE IT
by Cathy N. Davidson

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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BLACK BOY

A RECORD OF CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH

by Richard Wright ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 28, 1945

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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.