Halting, traumatized account of cruelty and suffering.
A harrowing memoir in the gothic, almost surreal setting of what some Africans do to other Africans.
Born to what he recalls as a blissful, unschooled childhood in southern Sudan, Piol Bol Buk (his Dinka name) was seven in 1986 when he made his first trip alone from his tribal village to the local marketplace. It was his last. For centuries, even, as the author claims, before there was Islam, Arabic people in the vast country’s north have claimed and exercised the right to raid the black settlements to the south for booty, cattle, and human chattel. Kidnapped into slavery by an Arab militiaman as the family goatherd, Bok spends his first traumatized weeks almost in a trance, sleeping on the ground in a crude hut, barely able to eat (the usual fare: meat gone bad). Crying, complaining, and recalcitrant behavior are corrected by swift beatings. Promoted to cowherd by age 12, he twice attempts to escape and is ultimately recaptured and told he will be shot in the morning. His master relents—“He needed me too much,” Bok recalls—but finally, after ten full years of captivity, he gets away. The accrued psychological trials are tortuous: learn Arabic to survive; after escaping, relearn Dinka and try to locate the parents you haven’t heard of in a decade. Unable to find word of his parents and in constant fear of informants who at one point label him an opponent of the government, Bok makes his way to Cairo and eventually, through the UN refugee program, to the US. He is the first escaped slave to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on a practice that, overlaid by Africa’s longest running civil war and the indifference of a now Islamist government (some Dinka are Christian), persists, unbelievably, to this day.
Halting, traumatized account of cruelty and suffering.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-312-30623-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2003
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
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
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