Ridley has definitely done her homework in recognizing Baret as an overlooked but important historical figure.
Dense, inquisitive biography of the first woman to circle the globe by sea.
After learning about intrepid voyager Jeanne Baret (1740–1803), Ridley (English/Univ. of Louisville; Clara’s Grand Tour: Travels with a Rhinoceros in Eighteenth-Century Europe, 2005) was intrigued by their shared interest in botany and surprised at the lack of information available. Compelled to uncover the truth about her subject, Ridley scoured historical texts, personal journals, shipping logs and encyclopedias. Baret’s interest in naturalism blossomed early, and she eventually caught the eye of esteemed Parisian botanist Philibert Commerson, who became enamored by this “herb woman” and her botanical wisdom. In 1766, Commerson joined French explorer Louis-Antoine de Bougainville on the first world circumnavigation expedition, which was staffed with 330 men. Anxious to join him in collecting floras of the worlds, Baret bound her chest, cross-dressed, donned a pistol and covertly enlisted as Commerson’s male servant—though, Ridley asserts, Commerson was well aware of the arrangement. Tolerating ravaging seasickness and unpredictable weather patterns, Baret was able to blend in with the crew (she claimed to be a eunuch) and reveled in discovering new plant species. However, upon reaching Tahiti in 1768, she was nearly gang-raped by native islanders who saw through her disguise. Ridley points out implausible discrepancies in Baret’s accounting of her voyage versus what was dictated into the logs of seamen who worked with her on the ships. She also expresses skepticism about Commerson’s naïveté, demonstrating that many of Baret’s crewmates were already aware of her gender but were wary to “rock the boat.” Dual themes of feminism and sexual equality anchor the author’s scholarly analysis as Baret reportedly remained ever-fearful of exposure, which would have placed Commerson and Bougainville’s respective reputations in jeopardy at a time when “a female stowaway was a curiosity, but a female botanist was a breach in the natural order of things.”
Ridley has definitely done her homework in recognizing Baret as an overlooked but important historical figure.Pub Date: Dec. 28, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-307-46352-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
Fans of Aunty Entity and the lady who showed Mick Jagger his best moves will delight in Turner’s lightly spun memoir.
Rock-’n’-soul icon Turner is happy at last, and she wants the world to know it.
The love story of the title is specific: The 78-year-old singer has been with her German mate for 33 years, and though bits and pieces of her body have been failing and misbehaving—she recounts a stroke, kidney failure, cancer, and other maladies—her love is going strong. It’s also generalized: Turner, born Anna Mae Bullock in Nutbush, Tennessee, is enchanted by the world, from her childhood countryside to the shores of Lake Zurich, where she has lived nearly half her life. There was another love story, of course, the one that fans will know and lament: her marriage to the drug-addicted, philandering Ike Turner, of whom she writes, pointedly, “at this point in my life, I’ve spent far more time without Ike than with him.” The author emerges from these pages as self-aware and hungry for knowledge and experience. Who knew that she was a dedicated reader of Dante as well as a “favorite aunt” of Keith Richards and a practitioner of Buddhism of such long standing that Ike himself demanded that she lose her shrine? The gossip is light, though she’s clear on the many reasons she broke away from Ike. She’s also forgiving, and as for others in her circle over the years, she calls Mel Gibson “Melvin” because of his “little boy quality,” though she doesn’t approve of certain bad behavior of his. Mostly, her portraits of such figures as David Bowie and Bryan Adams are affectionate, and the secrets she reveals aren’t terribly shocking. Those fishnet stockings and short skirts, she lets slip, were more practical than prurient, the stockings running less easily than nylons and the short skirts “easier for dancing because they left my legs free."
Fans of Aunty Entity and the lady who showed Mick Jagger his best moves will delight in Turner’s lightly spun memoir.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9824-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2018
A heartfelt and haunting memoir just right for the current political and social climate.
An acclaimed Mexican-born poet’s account of the sometimes-overwhelming struggles he and his parents faced in their quest to become American citizens.
Hernandez Castillo (Cenzontle, 2018, etc.) first came to the United States with his undocumented Mexican parents in 1993. But life in the shadows came at a high price. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided their home on multiple occasions and eventually deported the author’s father back to Mexico. In this emotionally raw memoir, Hernandez Castillo explores his family’s traumas through a fractured narrative that mirrors their own fragmentation. Of his own personal experiences, he writes, “when I came undocumented to the U.S., I crossed into a threshold of invisibility.” To protect himself against possible identification as an undocumented person, he excelled in school and learned English “better than any white person, any citizen.” When he was old enough to work, he created a fake social security card to apply for the jobs that helped him support his fatherless family. After high school, he attended college and married a Mexican American woman. He became an MFA student at the University of Michigan and qualified for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which allowed him to visit his father in Mexico, where he discovered the depth of his cultural disorientation. Battling through ever present anxiety, the author revisited his and his parents’ origins and then returned to take on the difficult interview that qualified him for a green card. His footing in the U.S. finally solidified, Hernandez Castillo unsuccessfully attempted to help his father and mother qualify for residency in the U.S. Only after his father was kidnapped by members of a drug cartel was the author able to help his mother, whose life was now in danger, seek asylum in the U.S. Honest and unsparing, this book offers a detailed look at the dehumanizing immigration system that shattered the author’s family while offering a glimpse into his own deeply conflicted sense of what it means to live the so-called American dream.
A heartfelt and haunting memoir just right for the current political and social climate.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-282559-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
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