A sequel to this author’s extraordinary debut is hopefully in the works. One senses she has much more to say.
First-time author Buhler’s charming childhood memoir about growing up on the Navajo Indian Reservation in the early 1960s.
Although the dusty, red landscape of Navajo country has changed little in the past four decades, its people are measurably different today. Even so, not much has been written about the Navajo shifts from traditional culture to modernism during the ’60s, making Buhler’s take an entry-level immersion into one of the most important decades in Navajo history. That the story is captured in real time through the eyes of a young girl is far less important than what those eyes see: newly paved roads, new clinics being built and a turbulent clash of cultures. Coming from a small Texas town and a family tree of racial discrimination, young Buhler’s parents pack her and her siblings up and move to Shiprock, where her father takes a job as gym teacher. Situated across the street from the Navajo boarding school in a segregated housing complex, after months of adjustment, the white family adopts two Navajo boys and slowly absorbs into the culture. On the occasional family reunion back to Texas, Buhler is asked to remove her concho belt and moccasins (traditional Navajo wear), as not to offend her relatives. The stage is set, and the reader delves into the stark contrast between the old generation of white racial intolerance and the new generation thrown into embracing misunderstood cultures. Later, when Buhler’s family leaves the reservation permanently, the road is studded with tension and even tragedy as the world at large shuns her Navajo brothers. Since this narrative is captured through the point of view of a little girl, the story drifts along with day-to-day details and simple language. Yet on turns the book sparkles with revealing moments of poignant insight, such as when the narrator observes the Navajo children entering the boarding school with long hair, only to leave with shaved heads. Or when a Navajo woman points with her lips at another person and not with her finger because the latter is taboo. The epilogue is the most elaborative chapter as the story ends in the racially motivated murder of her adopted brother and Buhler’s self-reconciliation through the Navajo worldview.
A sequel to this author’s extraordinary debut is hopefully in the works. One senses she has much more to say.Pub Date: Aug. 22, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-595-40543-5
Page Count: 170
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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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