A story of one child of illegal immigrants that has much wider, timely resonance.
Being a child of Hispanic immigrants in modern America.
The American views on immigration took center stage during the 2016 presidential primaries, with Democrat and Republican candidates offering up multiple solutions to the immigration "problem," which this book makes clear is not so easily simplified. Connolly, who has reported on the subject for more than 10 years, puts to rest the idea of a single problem, whether it be the Republican or the Democratic framing of an issue that seems to require more than any one political outlook can address. Living deep in the Midwest with his parents—illegal immigrants from Mexico, years before—Isaias Ramos is a teenager, first and foremost, seeking his way in the world. He wrestles with the questions of postsecondary education versus immediately entering the workplace, following in his parents' footsteps doing manual work. His school recognizes his potential as he handily dispatches various educational assessment exams, ranking sixth in his class and scoring a 29 on the ACT—better than 93 percent of students in the United States. At the same time, the school struggles to provide the resources needed to support the aspirations they have for him. Student aid for children of immigrants proves a bureaucratic mess that ultimately seems to be a dead end. As with nearly any teenager, Isaias' story pulls other teens into its orbit intermittently, as they learn the ways of moving from childhood into adulthood. Isaias undoubtedly grew over the years when Connolly got to know him, blending the transition of teenager-into-adulthood with the transition of a Mexican family into America. There is a wide, almost universal air to the author’s writing, as he alternately tells a narrowly focused story and a broad-based one, making clear that this tale of one family's immigration cannot be told without laying bare the complex context in which it is situated.
A story of one child of illegal immigrants that has much wider, timely resonance.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-250-08306-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
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
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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