Powerful and engaging.
Drawing on Frederick Douglass’ own words, this graphic novel tells the story of one man’s journey from the bondages of slavery to free, well-respected, and sought-after orator fighting for equality until the end of his life.
Readers see Douglass, the child of an enslaved mother whom he only saw a few short times in his life, with no knowledge of his actual birth date or father’s identity, being left at the plantation’s great house by his grandmother, starved by a tyrannical overseer, and sold by multiple owners. A moment of benevolence by one owner’s wife led to Frederick’s being taught to read, which proved to be the key to his liberation. Placing Douglass in historical context, the book tells readers of his support of black troops during the Civil War, his rallying for women and the vote (despite the racism of some white suffragists), his advocacy of the rights of Native Americans and Chinese immigrants, and his mentoring of anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells, and it also sheds light on intimate family relationships. The high-quality sources and extensive research lend this book an authenticity which precludes any denial of the cruelty, dehumanization, and intergenerational violence of slavery. The clear, expressive color illustrations simultaneously put faces to the characters as well as softening the blows of some of the more graphic moments in Frederick’s life, making it more palatable for a younger audience.
Powerful and engaging. (cast of characters, timeline, historical notes, sources, index) (Graphic biography. 12-18)Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-399-58144-1
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Ten Speed Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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