A potent memoir of stalking with special resonance in the era of #MeToo.
The acclaimed writer and campus lecturer shares a secret, revealing a story of stalking lurking just beneath her success.
In her latest, Freitas (Consent on Campus: A Manifesto, 2018, etc.) exposes the psychological havoc caused by her stalker and navigates the complex terrain of structural sexism and double standards involved with trusting in authority, academia, and the Catholic church. Silenced first by self-doubt and later by confidentiality agreements, the author provides a harrowing narrative of the detachment and disconnection often felt by harassment survivors. In her painstaking account, imbued throughout with alternating senses of self-awareness and -doubt, Freitas reviews her choices as if constantly scanning for fault or responsibility even as she unfolds the layers of lies that protected an influential professor. Her smooth storytelling skills translate this nightmare to the page with emotionally wrought insights. “If I named this thing it would stick to me, sink into me, become me,” she writes. “Not only would it rot me from the inside but now the rot would be visible. It would cling to me, mark me, become my scarlet letter.” Whether caught in a monster’s trap or the victim of a foolish old man’s misguided and inappropriate affections, Freitas manages to refrain from judgment without shielding her discomfort with either option. She discusses life after a trauma as a victim and survivor while delivering an unforgettable analysis of a devastating ordeal. As she interrogates womanhood, professional success, and expectations about protection when such behavior is reported, the author’s attention to the institutional response in light of current trends makes this an urgently vital perspective. Her excavations of victim-blaming and institution-protection actions are stark, and her sharing of this long-silenced story adds to the current social reckoning with unequal power dynamics on college campuses and elsewhere. A groundbreaking resource for educators, administrators, students, and survivors, the book explores an issue many would prefer to ignore.
A potent memoir of stalking with special resonance in the era of #MeToo.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-45052-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
PERSPECTIVES
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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