Utterly vital in its historical prowess, essential in its portraits of lived experiences.
Adapted for teen readers from the 2019 original, Treuer’s seminal account offers a fresh, distinct historical reconsideration.
The author’s purpose is clear from the outset: to present a deliberate counternarrative to mainstream assumptions and push back against the constrictive specter of the framing of the Wounded Knee massacre of 1890 as a turning point representing the end of Native American cultures. In seven chapters spanning prehistorical times to the present, this chronicle of Indigenous communities and peoples in North America is a scintillating version reduced in length but not breadth. Beginning with a brief overview of the pre-colonization period and the ensuing violent disruptions of the Europeans, the opening chapter also covers Indigenous resistance. The next chapter depicts the role of the U.S. government in an ever increasing, violent push for assimilation via boarding schools and the Dawes Act. The further the book goes into the 20th century and the rise of Native American social action in the 1960s and 1970s, such as through the American Indian Movement, the more Treuer includes firsthand stories from his research interviews. These accounts clearly delineate the ties between the continued impact of the past and the possibilities for a viable, hard-fought future for Native American lives. This essential work ends with a review of the Standing Rock protest and its potential and asks the fundamental, yet-to-be-answered question: “What kind of country do we want to be?”
Utterly vital in its historical prowess, essential in its portraits of lived experiences. (notes, index) (Nonfiction. 12-18)Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-20347-7
Page Count: 286
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
PERSPECTIVES
Skilled and graceful exploration of the soul of an astonishing human being.
Full-immersion journalist Kidder (Home Town, 1999, etc.) tries valiantly to keep up with a front-line, muddy-and-bloody general in the war against infectious disease in Haiti and elsewhere.
The author occasionally confesses to weariness in this gripping account—and why not? Paul Farmer, who has an M.D. and a Ph.D. from Harvard, appears to be almost preternaturally intelligent, productive, energetic, and devoted to his causes. So trotting alongside him up Haitian hills, through international airports and Siberian prisons and Cuban clinics, may be beyond the capacity of a mere mortal. Kidder begins with a swift account of his first meeting with Farmer in Haiti while working on a story about American soldiers, then describes his initial visit to the doctor’s clinic, where the journalist felt he’d “encountered a miracle.” Employing guile, grit, grins, and gifts from generous donors (especially Boston contractor Tom White), Farmer has created an oasis in Haiti where TB and AIDS meet their Waterloos. The doctor has an astonishing rapport with his patients and often travels by foot for hours over difficult terrain to treat them in their dwellings (“houses” would be far too grand a word). Kidder pauses to fill in Farmer’s amazing biography: his childhood in an eccentric family sounds like something from The Mosquito Coast; a love affair with Roald Dahl’s daughter ended amicably; his marriage to a Haitian anthropologist produced a daughter whom he sees infrequently thanks to his frenetic schedule. While studying at Duke and Harvard, Kidder writes, Farmer became obsessed with public health issues; even before he’d finished his degrees he was spending much of his time in Haiti establishing the clinic that would give him both immense personal satisfaction and unsurpassed credibility in the medical worlds he hopes to influence.
Skilled and graceful exploration of the soul of an astonishing human being.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2003
ISBN: 0-375-50616-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2003
Important for its frank sex talk but far less inclusive than it aims to be.
An exuberant guide to LGBT life takes the stance that “being L or G or B or T or * is SUPER FUN.”
Speaking with candor, humor, and enthusiasm, Dawson addresses topics from coming out to sexually transmitted infections to sex apps. With irreverent chapter titles like “Stereotypes Are Poo” and a chatty narrative voice, the tone is largely upbeat, though the author also touches on “some MEGA-SAD FACE topics” like discrimination. Easily readable tables and humorous cartoons further liven up the presentation. To add more perspectives, segments from interviewees who represent areas of the LGBT spectrum not represented by the author himself are also included. Chapters on sex and apps like Grindr are helpfully matter-of-fact, and readers hear from people who choose casual sex as well as those who prefer emotionally intimate relationships. The book is a U.K. import, and while U.S.–based readers shouldn’t have much trouble understanding Briticisms like “fancy” or “shag,” some of the anti-discrimination laws referenced won’t apply. More troubling, the book’s efforts to support transgender readers are undermined by persistent, thoughtless affirmations that biology really is destiny—for instance, when the author debunks the myth that “gay men are ‘girls’ ” with a jokey “Penis? Check! Yup, gay men are, in fact, male.”
Important for its frank sex talk but far less inclusive than it aims to be. (glossary, resources) (Nonfiction. 12-18)Pub Date: June 2, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4926-1782-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
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