Honest, informative, and emotional; an inspirational affirmation of “the value, depth, and beauty” of the disabled that...
A debut memoir recounts a woman’s efforts to overcome physical pain and depression, eventually finding her way to a positive self-image.
Drake’s mother’s health was compromised by juvenile diabetes, which caused serious difficulties in her pregnancy. When the author was born in the 1960s, three months premature, she weighed only 4 pounds; she was not expected to survive. She was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, and her parents were told she “would be intellectually impaired” and “might need to be institutionalized.” But with the aid of leg braces for 10 years, surgery when she was 12, and physiotherapy, Drake was able to walk on her own (albeit with a limp), attend school, and lead a fulfilling life as an occupational therapist. Now in her 50s, she recently married. Her childhood was complicated not only by her own disability, but by her mother’s illness and her parents’ deteriorating marriage as well. She recalls understanding at an early age that she should not cause her mother any stress, which could disrupt her blood sugar levels and cause a diabetic coma: “I learned to not be a burden. I learned to be quiet. I learned to play outside. I learned to not be in the way.” She also learned to think of herself as unworthy: “I carried such damaging shame; I believed in my inferiority, my brokenness, my separateness.” The author’s descriptive prose portrays the agony she endured each morning during her childhood when she strapped on her metal leg braces; her intense feelings of loneliness as she searched for love in all the wrong places; her 10-year bout with bulimia that landed her in the hospital; and more. Ultimately, she explains, it was through her love for her disabled patients that she began to fill the empty spaces in her heart: “I found a reason for being.” The narrative jumps around quite a bit in time sequence, and passages recounting the author’s recurring nightmares become too long. But this remains a remarkable story of strength and determination.
Honest, informative, and emotional; an inspirational affirmation of “the value, depth, and beauty” of the disabled that challenges stereotypes.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Kurti Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 30, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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