A novel glimpse behind the scenes of an incarceration facility during a radical period in American history.
George (The Bishop’s Folly, 2014, etc.) offers a memoir about his time spent working at an infamous California prison.
In 1971, a failed escape attempt at San Quentin State Prison in California resulted in violence and, later, a trial for six suspects known as the San Quentin Six. The events of that day were nothing short of brutal and included multiple deaths; as inmates attacked guards with crude weapons, their goal was often to cut their adversaries’ arteries. At the time of the escape attempt, the author worked at the Sierra Conservation Center, a minimum security facility in Sonora. Later, after he transferred to San Quentin, he had firsthand contact with the San Quentin Six, among other famous criminals, including Charles Manson. George takes readers on a journey that includes a variety of hardened criminals (including weapon-toting members of the Aryan Brotherhood and a man with the unfortunate nickname of “Pincushion”) and never questions the severity of prison life. The author strikes a good balance throughout, showing contempt for both unrepentant murderers and their often inhumane conditions, and he comes across as a man who did his best to stay human and do his job, despite the unthinkable characters around him. Some conclusions seem obvious (e.g., “A prisoner, one who has been locked up for ten years, does not think like a normal person”). However, many events prove the old adage of truth being stranger than fiction, as when counterculture figure Ram Dass came to the prison to lead a meditation “with full beard, cheerfully serene smiles and wearing light, gauzy Yoga attire.” An ending chapter on Manson (and a somewhat puzzling poem about him) feels tacked on, but at less than 200 pages, the book is a highly readable account of one man’s unique experience in a strange, often terrifying place.
A novel glimpse behind the scenes of an incarceration facility during a radical period in American history.Pub Date: May 31, 2015
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 145
Publisher: Book Baby
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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