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
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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