by Craig Hodges ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 24, 2017
A skillfully told, affecting memoir of sports and social activism.
A former professional basketball player looks back on his life on and off the court, with an emphasis on how his outspokenness regarding racial discrimination led to his unofficial banishment from the NBA.
Hodges was a three-point specialist whose skill helped the Chicago Bulls to back-to-back championships in 1991 and 1992; he also played for other NBA teams and enjoyed a successful 10-year career. However, as a black man who rarely shied away from challenging racial stereotypes—he grew up sending letters to members of Congress about significant issues—Hodges experienced dismay and then anger that almost all of his NBA colleagues refused to challenge the rich, white ownership establishment. Given that about 75 percent of the league’s players identified as black, Hodges preached the gospel of strength in numbers. In college at Long Beach State, he excelled academically as well as athletically and thus felt better prepared than most of his colleagues to present their grievances effectively. Unfortunately, the NBA stars of the 1980s and ’90s refused to heed his call; his ex-teammate Michael Jordan, the biggest of all the stars, does not come off well. Hodges hypothesizes that what he considers moral cowardice is linked to players seduced by huge salaries, fan adulation, and the cocoon of the NBA validating black manhood. He notes the rare exceptions, such as Lamar Odom and, to a lesser extent, Kobe Bryant. At the beginning of the book, the author sets the stage by recounting an invitation to the White House by President George H.W. Bush. Instead of wearing a traditional suit and greeting the president meekly, Hodges wore a dashiki and delivered a letter to Bush about the nation's shortcomings, many of them related to racial discrimination. Hodges' eventual banishment from the NBA caused him to occasionally second-guess his activism and led to bouts of depression, but he never surrendered his convictions.
A skillfully told, affecting memoir of sports and social activism.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-60846-607-8
Page Count: 220
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 8, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2016
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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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