by Glynn Baugher ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 29, 2018
A lucidly composed memoir, but one that’s too idiosyncratically personal to garner general interest.
Baugher recollects a quiet, happy upbringing in rural Virginia in this debut memoir.
The author was born and raised in Greene County, home to fewer than 1,000 inhabitants and generally “poor, unpaved, and backward,” he says. He was one of nine children in a remarkably tightknit family who owned livestock; as infants, they all slept in the bed with their mother, who breastfed Baugher until he was 4. The elementary school that he attended had a single room for a class of about 20 students, and, because his family never owned a car, they walked a two-and-a-half-mile round trip to the general store for necessities. Baugher provides a granular tour of his life up until he went off to college; for example, he describes in minute detail the house he grew up in and the meals that he typically ate, and he provides miniature portraits of each of his family members (including those in his extended family), as well as of neighbors and teachers. He even paints a vivid picture of the “brown and somewhat loamy” soil of his family’s property. Baugher was a bookish student who was singled out for his “ostentatious vocabulary,” he says, and endearingly credits his teachers with his academic success and eventual career in education. And although his youth was generally peaceful, he does recount some family drama; for example, he notes that his mother was 18 years old and seven months pregnant when she married his then-29-year-old father. Baugher writes in a companionably charming prose style that’s highly detailed but informally anecdotal. He gracefully and happily captures a seemingly uncomplicated time and place: “We did not find high culture or the world of the intellect there, but we didn’t want it, or—amounting to about the same thing—we didn’t know that we wanted it.” However, his self-described “personal history” doesn't seem designed to be read by strangers. Instead, it’s likely to appeal most to his own family members and friends, many of whom are pictured in scrapbook-style black-and-white photos.
A lucidly composed memoir, but one that’s too idiosyncratically personal to garner general interest.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5320-5939-1
Page Count: 210
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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 Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006
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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