A portrait of England's Queen Bess (1533-1603), which, despite its author's considerable storytelling skills, fails to demonstrate that she was central to England's ``golden age''-and fails to explain her character plausibly. Hibbert (The Days of the French Revolution, 1980; Rome, 1985; The American Revolution Through British Eyes, 1990 knows how to pace a narrative with well-chosen anecdotes and details that deftly summarize major figures (e.g., a memorably ugly French suitor of the queen have ``a nose so large as to appear to be worn as a joke''). He portrays both the public and private monarch in representative moments: riding horses, facing down Parliament and Spanish ambassadors, poring over finances, or speaking eloquently of her love for her subjects. In spite of the biography;s subtitle, this is no simplistic Anglophilic discussion of Queen Elizabeth. Yet, without a fuller discussion of the Tudor monarch's times, her special contribution to her country can't be understood. Moreover, the less attractive facets of this fiercely intelligent, charming queen-vanity, deceit, indecision-seem to come from a vacuum. Her constant disruptions of male expectations, her coquettishness and lifelong refusal to marry, all make little sense. One problem seems to be that her sexuality does not receive the sustained and careful attention given in Lytton Strachey's Elizabeth and Essex. Otherwise, the brilliance of the Elizabethan age seems disconnected from the ruler self-described as having ``the body of a weak and feeble woman, but...the heart and stomach of a king.'' A sharply observed biography that catches Elizabeth in all her complexity, but without a coherent vision of her character. (Sixty color and b&w illustrations.)
Pub Date: April 18, 1991
ISBN: 0-201-15626-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Addison-Wesley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1991
An alarming and inspiring message that will hopefully spur much-needed action.
The story of one woman’s call to ease the atrocious human suffering in the Congo.
Settling in Portland, Ore., in her late 20s, photographer Shannon thought her life was in place. Everything shifted, however, when she learned of the war and unthinkable tragedies taking place in the Congo, a conflict borne out of the Rwandan genocide that had become muted in the international community. Already running from her father’s death, she decided to run 30 miles and raise 30 sponsorships for Congolese women through Women for Women, an international NGO for female survivors of war. Hoping to spark a movement, she created a foundation called Run for Congo Women and traveled through the country to meet the women she helped sponsor. Shannon presents images of the uncensored horror stories that, to many Congolese, have become regrettably routine: Congo’s vile colonial history and the Rwandan genocide spillover that has caused the murders of more than five million Congolese people; children forced to kill and rape in their own communities; daily child deaths from easily curable illnesses; grisly murders of men and children in front of their wives and mothers; families burned alive inside their homes; women who must choose between rape and watching their children starve. The author writes from a place of determination and clarity, despair and breakdown, overwhelming love and hope. Juxtaposing brutality with beauty, Shannon’s direct prose is a stirring reminder that these horrors are real and ongoing.
An alarming and inspiring message that will hopefully spur much-needed action.Pub Date: April 5, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-58005-296-2
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Seal Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 29, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2010
An above-average memoir that itself serves as the musician’s next career chapter.
A rapper shows that her facility with language and revelation extends beyond music.
Though the memoir proceeds pretty much chronologically, it is more like a series of pieces, each with its own focus, than a cohesive narrative. A Minneapolis transplant to New York, raised by a Puerto Rican mother and a Caucasian father, with a degree in philosophy and a background in medical writing, Dessa (Spiral Bound, 2009, etc.) has consistently transcended conventional stereotyping, and her writing should command interest even from readers who know nothing of her work with the Doomtree collective and her solo releases. By her own admission, she came to music late—“in my midtwenties I was old enough to be a retired rapper—inexperienced and without good odds on making it a sustainable career. She succeeded through what she calls “the Tinker Bell model. She’s only real because she is clapped into existence….The Tinker Bell model is the nuclear option. It taps every reserve. It permits no Plan Bs.” Beyond artistic drive, the obsessive undercurrent of this memoir is her on-again, off-again romance with a crewmate (and soul mate?) identified only as X; the relationship was incredibly passionate but so combustible it couldn’t sustain itself. Dessa’s mother and father were equally driven in unorthodox directions, as the former started raising cattle and the latter devoted years to building his own one-man airplane. Some of the narrative is a standard tour diary, what it’s like to be on the road, where, she quotes a Doomtree rapper, you’re “a traveling T-shirt salesman.” She writes of an assignment from the New York Times Magazine in which she was to visit New Orleans like a tourist (so different from visiting as a touring musician), and she writes of her sidelights delivering lectures and performance pieces and of her invitation to contribute to “The Hamilton Mixtape.” It has been a singular career, and it is by no means over.
An above-average memoir that itself serves as the musician’s next career chapter.Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4229-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: June 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
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