Captivating from cover to cover, readers will share in the author’s struggle and celebration of family.
Fontánez offers a tribute to his late father, Modesto Fontánez Rivera.
Set against the beauty and hardship of rural Puerto Rico, Fontánez’s memoir explores—via writings and images—his fraught relationship with a complex man. Fontánez recounts his father’s mental decline into dementia—which steals his father’s memory but yields a new connection with his son. Now a successful artist in New York, the author confronts his childhood fear that he was a disappointment to his father by digging through his childhood memories. He reinterprets the behaviors of a man whose love of parties and music seemed to eclipse his love of everything else, including his family. Realizing that Modesto, too, was an artist, Fontánez discovers someone who, struggling with a modest life and considerable responsibilities, found freedom through the one form of emotional expression available—music. Juxtaposing Modesto’s brash, irresponsible youth with the docile older man he becomes, Fontánez unpacks the cultural pressures that repress male emotions, which, in turn, drive family dynamics. An imposing presence in the life of his son, Modesto is seen alternately as a hero and a villain but always as a man of nuanced passions. Fontánez portrays this fluidity by blending elements of personal narrative, journal entries, poetry, photographs, and artwork inspired by his childhood in Puerto Rico. The resulting eclectic work is as beautiful and readable as it is memorable.
Captivating from cover to cover, readers will share in the author’s struggle and celebration of family.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-9831891-4-5
Page Count: 268
Publisher: Exit Studio
Review Posted Online: Sept. 22, 2022
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
“Protect your passion,” writes an NBA star in this winning exploration of how we can succeed in life.
A future basketball Hall of Famer’s rosy outlook.
Curry is that rare athlete who looks like he gets joy from what he does. There’s no doubt that the Golden State Warriors point guard is a competitor—he’s led his team to four championships—but he plays the game with nonchalance and exuberance. That ease, he says, “only comes from discipline.” He practices hard enough—he’s altered the sport by mastering the three-point shot—so that he achieves a “kind of freedom.” In that “flow state,” he says, “I can let joy and creativity take over. I block out all distractions, even the person guarding me. He can wave his arms and call me every name in the book, but I just smile and wait as the solution to the problem—how to get the ball into the basket—presents itself.” Curry shares this approach to his craft in a stylish collection that mixes life lessons with sharp photographs and archival images. His dad, Dell, played in the NBA for 16 years, and Curry learned much from his father and mother: “My parents were extremely strict about me and my little brother Seth not going to my pops’s games on school nights.” Curry’s mother, Sonya, who founded the Montessori elementary school that Curry attended in North Carolina, emphasized the importance not just of learning but of playing. Her influence helped Curry and his wife, Ayesha, create a nonprofit foundation: Eat. Learn. Play. He writes that “making reading fun is the key to unlocking a kid’s ability to be successful in their academic journeys.” The book also has valuable pointers for ballers—and those hoping to hit the court. “Plant those arches—knees bent behind those 10 toes pointing at the hoop, hips squared with your shoulders—and draw your power up so you explode off the ground and rise into your shot.” Sounds easy, right?
“Protect your passion,” writes an NBA star in this winning exploration of how we can succeed in life.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9780593597293
Page Count: 432
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
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