by H.B. Cavalcanti ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 5, 2012
A Brazilian-born scholar's study of Brazilian immigration to America through the lens of his experiences on the way to becoming a naturalized American citizen.
Cavalcanti (Sociology/James Madison Univ.; Voices from the Valley: Rural Ministry in the United Church of Christ, 2011, etc.) examines the "bifurcated lives" of Brazilian immigrants like himself "whose lives only make sense seen from the prism of both [Brazilian and American cultures].” He discusses how, though born in Recife and raised by "very Brazilian" parents, he became well-versed in the culture of the American South through Presbyterianism, the religion his family practiced and which was brought to northern Brazil by American missionaries in the 1800s. By the time he was a young man, Cavalcanti was a cultural hybrid who was as fond of bossa nova as he was the songs of Stephen Foster and Hoagy Carmichael. However, due to his exposure to Protestant ideals of self-determination and self-reliance, he found that he could not fully accept the military dictatorships that ruled Brazil or the Iberian patronage system that "coated all aspects" of Brazilian life. And so he became part of the Latin American migrant flow to the United States, a trend that exists because "the United States...offers opportunities that we cannot find in our own countries.” With a powerful blend of compassion and academic insight, the author discusses the emotional and financial costs of immigration while also celebrating the heightened awareness and personal freedom offered to individuals who stay the course in adopting a new country and culture. Cavalcanti then discusses his experiences alongside major theories of global migration and considers the social and economic factors that account for migratory trends, especially in the last 30 years. A wise and humane book that illuminates the modern Brazilian immigrant experience with vigor and clarity.
Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2012
ISBN: 978-0299288945
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Univ. of Wisconsin
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2013
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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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