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NEVER STOP WALKING

Name: NEVER STOP WALKING
Author: Christina Rickardsson
ISBN: 978-1-5039-0096-7

by Christina Rickardsson ; translated by Tara F. Chace ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2018

A thought-provoking and humane memoir of survival and self-discovery.

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A Brazilian-born Swedish woman’s account of childhood poverty and reconciling her early trauma with her experiences in adulthood.

In 2012, Rickardsson discovered that she had suddenly “hit the wall.” Gradually, it became clear that her troubled past had finally caught up with her. Growing up, she and her younger brother, Patrick, had lived a feral existence alongside their schizophrenic single mother, Petronilia, in a series of caves just outside São Paulo. As difficult as their circumstances were, their mother still managed to make their lives bearable through her unstinting love. Eventually, the family made their way to São Paulo’s favelas, where Petronilia worked menial jobs and Rickardsson quickly learned that survival meant doing whatever it took to secure a meal. In one disturbing episode, she recounts how she inadvertently killed a young boy who tried to steal her food scraps. But the author never forgot the stolen moments of joy she experienced with other street children. Petronilia eventually left her children in an orphanage that brokered their adoption into a Swedish family. Life in Europe was far easier materially, but emotionally, Rickardsson realized she had been “split in two.” On the outside, she was Christina, the brown-skinned girl who strove to fit into a white, upper-middle-class Swedish world. On the inside, she was Christiana, the scrappy street fighter who bore the weight of a painful past. Rickardsson’s breakthrough came when she found the name of the orphanage from which she had been adopted. Seeking to bridge the gap between who she was and who she became, the author flew to Brazil to find her mother and come to terms with her past. Both candid and compelling, Rickardsson’s story is not only about a woman seeking to heal the fractures inherent in a transnational identity; it is also a moving meditation on poverty, injustice, and the meaning of family.

A thought-provoking and humane memoir of survival and self-discovery.

Pub Date: June 1, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-5039-0096-7

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Amazon Crossing

Review Posted Online: March 18, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018

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)