An engaging work about how the tenacity of a young girl changes her parents’ lives.
Kupershmit’s memoir explores her relationship to her elder daughter.
Shortly after her first daughter, Emma, was born, the author realized that something was unusual about her: “she opened her eyes, her gaze the glassy surface of a lake. It beckoned me to embrace and protect her, but it frightened me also.” Doctors conducted genetic testing and soon discerned that Emma had “a chromosomal anomaly.” As one physician told Kupershmit and her husband, Tolya, “we can assume that she will live with moderate to profound retardation.” The new parents were devastated, and after they left the hospital without their baby girl, who was being closely monitored, they wrestled with a huge decision: Could they properly and adequately raise a child who would demand a tremendous amount of care and attention? Distraught, they agreed that they couldn’t. After finding an adoptive family for Emma, they attempted to return to normalcy, but Kupershmit soon discovered that Tolya had been going to visit their daughter. The couple realized that they couldn’t live without her, after all. Soon, Emma was home again, and they adjusted to her needs; eventually, they had two more children, as well. Kupershmit’s prose is straightforward in style, and she tells her story chronologically with occasional backstory about her childhood in Soviet Ukraine, moving to the United States at 8, and starting to date Tolya when she was 16. But as her relationship deepens with Emma, so, too, does the writing become more tender: “Emma was the fulcrum upon which I teetered,” she writes toward the end of the memoir. “I saw then that Emma was teaching me how to be in this world, how to navigate through life. She was intrepid, she feared no one.” The author effectively shows how she learned lessons from raising Emma that allowed her to draw on a wellspring of love for other members of her family. She also relates how Emma’s health complications resulted in difficult challenges and hardships over the years.
An engaging work about how the tenacity of a young girl changes her parents’ lives.Pub Date: June 15, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64742-112-0
Page Count: 243
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
