An inspiring story of beating the odds.
A motivational autobiography of the nation’s first African-American dean of a major medical school.
Wilson’s life traces a remarkable arc. Born in Massachusetts in 1936 to a father who fled South Carolina to escape a lynching, the author had many hurdles in front of him from the beginning. However, the successful life he subsequently carved out with determination, hard work and honesty proves that a strong sense of self can launch a person beyond limitations. Except for the final two chapters, with their neatly packaged lessons in leadership, this book consists of a straightforward account of Wilson’s life, from birth to retirement. From the age of nine, after a visit from a local physician to treat his terrible case of pneumonia, Wilson knew that he wanted to be a doctor. Forget that this was 1945 and long before the civil-rights movement; ignore the fact that a few years later his elementary school principal would think it more appropriate for him to attend the local trade school rather than the college-preparatory high school. Wilson knew what he wanted to do and had the intelligence and tenacity to go after it. After college at Harvard, where he was one of only nine African-American students on campus, Wilson landed at Tufts University Medical School in 1958, at a time when minorities made up about two percent of the medical-school student population nationwide. Wilson was forced to blaze his own trail, a fact magnified by the fact that there were no African-American faculty or professionals in the school to serve as role models or mentors. The book includes poignant moments in the author’s life: providing medical care to the very same people who would not rent a house to him because of his race; developing his reputation as a leading researcher in New York; and becoming the first African-American Chief of Gastroenterology at the University of Illinois School of Medicine in Chicago. Through it all, Wilson faced discrimination from those who could not imagine an African-American man as the dean of a major medical school, no matter how stellar his qualifications. Nevertheless, Wilson became the dean of the University of Maryland medical school in 1991 and overhauled its direction, culture and curriculum before retiring 15 years later. This autobiography is heavy on the literal details of his accomplishments and less fulfilling in terms of providing lessons for the reader to take away from his experiences. Still, it exemplifies how strong focus and resolve can bring what seems impossible within grasp.
An inspiring story of beating the odds.Pub Date: May 21, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4392-2268-3
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2010
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
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
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