The early chapters recall Simone de Beauvoir’s Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, but later chapters become unfocused as Howe...
A frank, engaging memoir by Feminist Press founder Howe (editor: The Politics of Women’s Studies: Testimony from the 30 Founding Mothers, 2000, etc.) about growing up poor, smart and determined.
The most absorbing part of this elaborate work—at times overlong and overly detailed—is the charming early account of the young protagonist born in Brownsville, Brooklyn, a Jewish ghetto in the 1930s. Relegated to second place after the birth of her brother, the “new golden baby boy,” the author was nonetheless the one her grandfather taught Hebrew and Yiddish until his death in 1940. Howe was a strong student, thwarted early on by illness and her mother’s stingy ways, but she attained spectacular heights in education, first on scholarship at Hunter College—where she was mortified to learn that she had a working-class Jewish Brooklyn accent, and worked hard to rid herself of it, although she stopped talking in class and didn’t regain a public voice for many years—and then graduate studies at Smith College and the University of Wisconsin. Growing up in the pre-feminist era, the author had no greater ambitions than becoming a high-school English teacher, but she went on to get a doctorate and teach college. She was discouraged to pursue writing and even wrecked an unbelievable chance to write for the New Yorker because she did not pursue an entrée with editor William Shawn. Moreover, she imagined she had to marry the men she had sex with, which proved disastrous. In the chapter titled “Becoming a Feminist,” Howe chronicles her early work introducing women’s studies to college curriculums and her decision to start the Feminist Press in 1970 in response to the need for biographies on notable women. The author compartmentalizes much of her rich experience in discrete chapters—family, marriages, tenure track, activism, friendships—yet each part resonates with a lively, frank deliberation.
The early chapters recall Simone de Beauvoir’s Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, but later chapters become unfocused as Howe tries to include everything. Nonetheless, a valuable chronicle of a life devoted to ideas and social justice.Pub Date: April 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-55861-697-4
Page Count: 588
Publisher: Feminist Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2011
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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