Some will appreciate Alexander’s recollection of rap’s bling-bling ’90s, while others will be haunted by the portrait of his...
A mix of young-black-journalist memoir and rural family history, told with plenty of analytical flossing.
Alexander introduces himself by noting of his Sandusky, Ohio, upbringing, “Niggas always accusing Buckeye niggas of acting white, but that’s a small-town thing.” His debut’s most charming moments depict the conflicting influences on his childhood of his strict mother and his mostly absent father, locally notorious for gangster glamour and an abbreviated singing career. Delbert appears only sporadically in his son’s life, but provides this memoir’s strongest element: Alexander adeptly dramatizes the hard equations that befell generations of African-American men, ranging in Delbert’s instance from youthful addiction, violence, and imprisonment to humiliating stints at factory work and selling Confederate flags. Far less powerful is Alexander’s exhaustive evocation of his own post-adolescence, a druggy idyll of underground radio, school-newspaper controversies, interracial sex, and slacker angst—hardly novel memoir material, notwithstanding numerous references to and encounters with West Coast rappers. His rapid success as a California-based freelance journalist is recalled in aggressive prose that combines hip-hop freestyling with Mailer-esque affect. Yet this personal narrative devolves into a dreary final third, as Alexander’s relationship with his long-suffering wife deteriorates and he concentrates on racking up human-interest stories on “difficult” athletes like Alonso Spellman and Latrell Sprewell. The author seems incapable of writing about the cultural milieu he loves without projecting his own persona as its epochal center, and his striving to be “the only hip-hop journalist who mattered” becomes increasingly wearying. Despite various shrewd observations (e.g., terming sports journalists “the ultimate hangers on”), Alexander comes off by the end as yet another under-40 culture flack with mutational self-esteem.
Some will appreciate Alexander’s recollection of rap’s bling-bling ’90s, while others will be haunted by the portrait of his delinquent father.Pub Date: June 1, 2003
ISBN: 1-4000-4602-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2003
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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