by Clifford L Braman ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 22, 2014
A quaint chronicle of a young man’s revelations about religious dogma and moral justice.
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In this debut memoir, a tumultuous year at a strict Christian boarding school shows one young man when to stand up for himself.
Drawing on his experiences as the son of a preacher, Braman offers insights into how teenagers, even well-mannered ones, can be pushed to their limits by the draconian enforcement of religious and moral rules. His memoir opens with the worn conceit of a dirt road as a symbol for the journey of life, but this muddy metaphor gives way to a coming-of-age tale about his year attending a restrictive Christian boarding school in central Florida in 1962. In a story peppered with asides on bygone fixtures, such as a $1 diner breakfast, Braman tells how he thumbed his nose at the school’s authoritarians by roughhousing during football matches with his best friend, Bill, and sneaking around campus to spend more time with his sweetheart, Brenda. Student snitches told on misbehaving classmates, which left the student body paranoid about being watched, and confirmed Braman’s apprehension about living in a religious panopticon. The plot moves at a steady clip throughout, with tension between the students and teachers building as the school reaches its Christmas break. At the height of the drama, Braman took a stand against the tyrannical Mrs. Rutledge, earning students’ respect. Although he maintained a few allies among the faculty, his stand eventually morphed into full-tilt rebellion, and soon after, he was expelled. Returning home to his parents’ more forgiving views on Christianity and ethics, he realized how oppressive the academy’s environment was. The short chapters divide the story into meaningful scenes, full of folksy observations and anecdotes about his teenage years. Throughout, the author imparts common-sense advice about coming to terms with responsibility and authority. With an avuncular tone and a nudge toward mischief, he conjures a journey of change—a snapshot of innocence turned into the picture of responsibility, tinged with the nostalgia of growing up in the good old days.
A quaint chronicle of a young man’s revelations about religious dogma and moral justice.Pub Date: July 22, 2014
ISBN: 978-1497482470
Page Count: 138
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
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
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