For students and scholars of early feminism.
A memoir from a hitherto unknown educator and reformer, first published in Paris in 1925.
Born in little-settled West Texas in 1892, Beasley had an oppressively unhappy family life. Her father was a “restless, violent alcoholic” who moved his 13 children frequently as he pursued one pipe-dream scheme after another. Her siblings were, by her account, uninspired and unintelligent—and worse: “I did not like my three oldest brothers (I feared, mistrusted, and hated them at times, chiefly because of their treatment of me which I look upon now as pure rape. There was no play about it.)” An early student of Freudian psychology, Beasley catalogs instances of sexual abuse while revealing herself to be ahead of her time in attitudes toward sexual relations. While she glances over her father after a divorce that put the now splintered family into financial peril, she recounts endless fights with a petulant, depressive mother, of whom she writes, “Sometimes I thought I hated my mother more bitterly than anyone in the world.” Freedom came when she earned a teaching degree and, in time, ended up in educational administration in the Pacific Northwest only to run afoul of her boss. Readers familiar with Marguerite Noble’s novel Filaree (1979) will find Beasley’s memoir to be a companion piece of sorts, though the latter is wooden by comparison. Problematic, too, is that the author is not an especially sympathetic character, particularly because she is consistently disdainful of those she considers intellectually or culturally inferior (“in my heart of hearts I never liked the people of the Baptist church and held the best of them in suspicion”), not least her own family: “None of them was ever capable of carrying on an intelligent conversation. My home life was in every way a retrogression: there was no soul, no love, no intelligence.” That she was able to leave home at 17 was doubtless mutually satisfying all around.
For students and scholars of early feminism.Pub Date: Sept. 28, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-72824-288-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2021
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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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