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GRINGA LATINA

A WOMAN OF TWO WORLDS

A nostalgic memoir of a childhood lived between two cultures. The daughter of Italian parents, now a US citizen, freelance journalist and novelist De Ferrari (A Cloud on Sand, 1990) recounts her idyllic girlhood in Tacna, Peru, and the roots of her Latina identity. Sheltered by her family's wealth and the insularity of her small town, De Ferrari grew up a gringa among Latinos. In brief chapters, she details her world: nurturing parents, whom she idolized; the family servants, important household figures who cosseted the girl and told her stories that figured crucially in her imaginative life; her luxurious house and garden. Those first 15 years in Tacna were not without strife. The author was eventually sent to school in England, in part because her wealth made it difficult for her Peruvian classmates to accept her. (The rejection still rankles: Of a former rival's ill fortune, she writes, ``I wonder what the mother superior would think of her pet student now.'') De Ferrari's prose ranges from the evocative, as in a description of a room that smells ``as if candles had been burning and wet mud had been mixed with the fragrance of lilies,'' to the clichÇd, as in a picture of her father having ``striking blue eyes and a wide forehead that bespoke his great intelligence.'' English, her third language, is the vehicle for her ``most complicated thoughts,'' yet she does not delve too deeply into the emotional consequences of a multicultural identity. She mentions how Peru has changed for the worse (pollution, terrorism, corruption) but only grazes core political issues, and although she describes her social position as a wealthy Peruvian, she doesn't fully acknowledge its impact on the poorer people around her. Readers gain entrÇe into a rarefied, intriguing world, but the tale is rather sparse and short on discovery. (Author tour)

Pub Date: April 1, 1995

ISBN: 0-395-70934-2

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1995

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NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

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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