Both heartrending and chilling.
Eyewitness account of the systematic genocide inflicted on the black African tribes of Darfur province by Sudan’s Arab government.
Assisted by British broadcast journalist Lewis (co-author: Slave: My True Story, 2004), Bashir begins with her mostly happy childhood in a small village in the western desert. She does not whitewash the past, however: As a young girl she resisted the ritual facial scarification that was customary in her Zaghawa tribe, but could not escape genital mutilation (described in horrific detail). She was the daughter of a cattle herder prosperous enough to send her away to secondary school and to medical school in Khartoum, where she endured (and defied) Arab scorn and mistreatment. While the initial chapters charm with their fascinating portrait of tribal desert life, those that follow are grim. When government officials learned of the young doctor’s determination to treat the wounded from both sides of the conflict destroying Darfur, Bashir was at first threatened and then detained and gang-raped. Following the burning of her village and the rape and slaughter of its inhabitants, she fled south and after some months was able, with the help of a paid agent, to board a plane leaving Sudan. The memoir’s final portion recounts her life in England, where she entered a marriage arranged long-distance by her father. Bashir and her husband (a cousin from her village) repeatedly attempted to gain asylum as refugees, but they were nearly deported; thanks to publicity drummed up by the Aegis Trust, an NGO active in efforts to end the Darfur crisis, they were able to remain in England. Bashir still has no knowledge of the fate or whereabouts of her family in Sudan. An epilogue provides statistics about the extent of the killing and devastation in Darfur, the failed attempts of the international community to halt it and the enabling role of China, a major importer of Sudanese oil and principal supplier of its arms.
Both heartrending and chilling.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-345-50625-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2008
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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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