by Frank Marshall Davis ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1993
Richly voiced African-American memoir by Davis (1905-87), a journalist-poet who disappeared in 1948 and became known as the ``mystery poet.'' This memoir has been lovingly edited by John Edgar Tidwell (English/Miami University of Ohio) from a variety of manuscripts put together after Davis's death, and it may be expanded if more of his second volume, That Incredible Waikiki Jungle, is ever found. In the one surviving Waikiki section, included here, Davis describes two trips he made to the mainland, in 1973 and '74, to give poetry readings after having spent 25 years in Hawaii. He found the relaxation of Jim Crow racism and the widespread miscegenation in Atlanta—where he'd edited the Atlanta World in the late 1930's—quite amazing. The two outstanding qualities here are Davis's writing voice, with its throaty, soft cornet style nicely jazzed up with ``broads'' and ``chicks'' and ``foxes,'' and the history of his inferiority complex, which was too deep to overcome psychically, although socially he found himself free and equal (for the most part) in Hawaii. Big, tall, and handsome, Davis was often mistaken—even by blacks—for world heavyweight-champion Joe Louis. He first heard the blues in his hometown, Arkansas City, Kansas, ``a yawn town fifty miles south of Wichita, five miles north of Oklahoma, and east and west of nowhere worth remembering,'' where he was often the lone black student in his grade and where he graduated ``magna cum laude in bitterness.'' The blues became his blood, and he became a jazz critic, reporter, and editor for several African-American newspapers and was active in the civil-rights movement. His ``disappearance'' to Hawaii with his white wife in 1948 in no way lessened his activism. A lost reputation rises from the dead and adds a fearless new voice to the black Renaissance. (Fourteen halftones—not seen.)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-299-13500-4
Page Count: 373
Publisher: Univ. of Wisconsin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1992
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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
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by Reyna Grande ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 28, 2012
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.
In her first nonfiction book, novelist Grande (Dancing with Butterflies, 2009, etc.) delves into her family’s cycle of separation and reunification.
Raised in poverty so severe that spaghetti reminded her of the tapeworms endemic to children in her Mexican hometown, the author is her family’s only college graduate and writer, whose honors include an American Book Award and International Latino Book Award. Though she was too young to remember her father when he entered the United States illegally seeking money to improve life for his family, she idolized him from afar. However, she also blamed him for taking away her mother after he sent for her when the author was not yet 5 years old. Though she emulated her sister, she ultimately answered to herself, and both siblings constantly sought affirmation of their parents’ love, whether they were present or not. When one caused disappointment, the siblings focused their hopes on the other. These contradictions prove to be the narrator’s hallmarks, as she consistently displays a fierce willingness to ask tough questions, accept startling answers, and candidly render emotional and physical violence. Even as a girl, Grande understood the redemptive power of language to define—in the U.S., her name’s literal translation, “big queen,” led to ridicule from other children—and to complicate. In spelling class, when a teacher used the sentence “my mamá loves me” (mi mamá me ama), Grande decided to “rearrange the words so that they formed a question: ¿Me ama mi mamá? Does my mama love me?”
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6177-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
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