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Growing Tall Amidst Obstacles

Name: Growing Tall Amidst Obstacles
Author: Chief Nnamdi A. Ekenna
ISBN: 978-1490914008

by Chief Nnamdi A. Ekenna ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 15, 2014

A unique collection of observations and impressions that’s ultimately too pensive to be engaging.

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A man’s philosophical retelling of his remarkable life.

Ekenna, godson of the first president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria—a chief who’s also an attorney in Los Angeles—says this book is the result of a dare from friends. Following through on this dare, Ekenna, the seventh of 19 children, has analyzed personal emails, poems, folklore and anecdotes, and arranged those reflections into an amorphous narrative of his life. With this project, he extensively examines his goals and processes: “The subject was undefined, indeterminate, sort of, the general discourse took on a life of its own, and before we knew it, it transmuted into grammar, writing, you know, that sort of thing.” With his playful but simultaneously eloquent prose amid long digressions and preoccupations, Ekenna gives the inviting impression that he is merely having an intelligent conversation with close friends. The fascinating, unusual structure of his family, an encounter with a veritable rainmaker and his time as an “accidental refugee” during the Nigerian civil war can feel like mere asides to his methodical examination of English grammar or rigorous primary school routines. He successfully mines small moments for profound implications, such as the moving scene when a woman in California surprises him with a polite greeting—prompting his email rant on racism and alienation in the United States. However, this insight, which is more often focused on inconsequential details, tends to work against opportunities for emotional resonance. As a so-called “veerer” on the path of life, “I have in me the blood of a medicine man, a magician of sorts, and one who communed with the gods,” he says, “and I would have like [sic] to veer even further”—a philosophy his writing intriguingly reflects, difficult to follow though it may be.

A unique collection of observations and impressions that’s ultimately too pensive to be engaging.

Pub Date: March 15, 2014

ISBN: 978-1490914008

Page Count: 274

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: June 4, 2014

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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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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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)