A brutal, frightening, but ultimately hopeful story of adoption.
Kuehnel’s debut memoir tells of a young boy changing countries, changing families, and enduring nearly as much hardship as a life can hold.
In 1974, when he was 8 years old, Kuehnel’s mother abandoned him and his younger brothers on the streets of Quezon City in the Philippines. He writes that he “felt like a disposable diaper, discarded when soiled.” He was soon sent to an orphanage, where he and his brothers waited by the curb outside each day until, eventually, they gave up hope. Their father came to visit early on, only to leave again and never return; they also went to see their mother’s new family, who sent them away. They later moved to a rougher orphanage where “After a while, our stomachs learned not to rumble, but nothing eased the constant ache.” The bullying there was constant, and they endured beatings by “house parents”; their only toys were made of trash, and their only bath was an open sewer. The author eventually escaped to the streets, but “to survive, I had to rely on the half-eaten, half-rotten food that people threw away.” Eventually, he was lucky enough to find adoptive parents in America who cared for him. However, he still had to deal with years of culture shock and lost hope. Even now, after obtaining a doctorate and founding a charitable organization, Kuehnel still feels “alone even when…surrounded by friends and family.” By this exceptionally touching memoir’s end, readers will understand the reasons behind his feelings of solitude and marvel at his life’s burdens. He clearly paints the disturbing details of his early life in run-down institutions and on the streets. Kuehnel knows that there’s no such thing as an entirely happy ending, and he respects his readers too much to offer one. But he does show cautious optimism in the book’s final pages and a faith in mankind that readers won’t be able to help but admire.
A brutal, frightening, but ultimately hopeful story of adoption.Pub Date: July 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4904-4913-5
Page Count: 217
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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