An educational hybrid, with vivid illustrations backed by scholarly context.
Part action comic, part historical biography: an attempt to correct the record and give a pivotal figure the prominence he deserves.
As Walker, a history professor who has written widely on Latin American history, writes, Juan Bautista Túpac Amaru (1747-1827) “was an unlikely icon. He did not lead men into battle or give inspiring speeches. His memoirs are his only publication. He himself expressed surprise at his turns of fate, including his decades of harsh imprisonment and his return to freedom in Argentina as an old man.” That autobiography, in which he chronicles what he suffered, endured, and observed on three continents, in exile and imprisonment, demonstrates that he “had a ringside seat to the events of the Age of Revolution and rubbed shoulders with many of the era’s important figures.” He lived not only during a time when the New World was threatening to cast off the chains of the old, but also when the French Revolution was illuminating the hope of liberation. After his half brother, José Gabriel Túpac Amaru, died in the Inca revolution, Juan Bautista faced a lifetime of incarceration and misery. He was taken in chains on a deadly voyage across the Atlantic to Europe, where he would spend almost half of his life imprisoned. The graphic narrative of the first section, illustrated by Cape Town–based illustrator Clarke, is a swashbuckling account, as colorful and action-packed as a summer blockbuster. In the second and third sections, which are not illustrated, Walker provides the historical context, including primary sources and information about how and when Juan Bautista wrote the memoirs that he published; how and why they were discredited, with a single source labeling them “apocryphal” and their author an “imposter”; and how it took a century before their veracity was confirmed. This is a fascinating story, though younger readers of the graphic narrative may be jarred by the contrast between the illustrated first half and the academic second half.
An educational hybrid, with vivid illustrations backed by scholarly context.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-19-094115-4
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2020
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.
According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy, which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063226562
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
SEEN & HEARD
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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