An insider’s view of the struggles inherent in any attempt to straddle different cultures.
In her debut, memoirist and anthropologist Enslin writes of her experiences marrying a high-caste Brahman man, giving birth and living with his family on the central plains of Nepal.
While earning her doctorate from Stanford University, the author altered her course after meeting Pramod, a student from Nepal. Originally slated to study African culture for her thesis, she changed her focus to India so that she and Pramod could conduct their anthropology fieldwork together. They briefly visited Nepal to meet his family and then returned to the United States to marry and finish their coursework. After her unexpected pregnancy constrained her fieldwork, Enslin shifted her focus to Nepali women’s political movements. She lived with her in-laws off and on for the next eight years, and cultural differences became tantamount as she was exposed to caste distinctions. Aama, Pramod’s mother, became a central figure in the author’s life, telling stories, creating songs, learning to read, mediating disputes and almost running for political office. She smoothed Enslin’s transition into the family and her new homeland. The author opens a window on a multigenerational rural family, showing how outside tensions and upheaval affect them. With an anthropologist’s eye, she describes weddings, childbirth and women’s gatherings. Her observations have been honed by years of daily chores and family intimacy, and she conveys the difficulties in fitting into her husband’s home and adapting to Nepali culture while earning a doctorate and preparing for the birth of her son. “I remembered my research filtered through a haze of poor planning, pregnancy, sleeplessness, and mild postpartum depression,” she writes. The author also includes a helpful glossary of Nepali words at the end of the book.
An insider’s view of the struggles inherent in any attempt to straddle different cultures.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1580055444
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Seal Press
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
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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