Humane and informative stories about refugees and their plights in America.
Personal stories of child refugees as they integrate into American society.
Focusing on one classroom in South High School in Denver, Colorado, Thorpe (Soldier Girls: The Battles of Three Women at Home and at War, 2014, etc.) dives deep into the lives of 22 students, all refugees, who were just some of the many who enrolled in South High School’s newcomer class, a basic English acquisition class taught by kindhearted Eddie Williams. The students came from the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, running from civil war, extreme persecution, drought, famine, and a variety of other atrocities. As in her previous books, Thorpe writes with great compassion, and she demonstrates a profound understanding of how difficult it must have been for these children to leave everything they’d ever known and move to a foreign country where the language, customs, and culture were so vastly different. She shares Williams’ methodology, which allows these boys and girls to cast aside their fears and bond with one another and their teacher, all while gaining a basic understanding of the English language. Thorpe also includes information on the general refugee situation in the U.S., discussing the various needs that must be provided for these newcomers and their families, including adequate clothing, housing, and money for apartment rentals, as well as job training and integration into the work force. She is candid about the occasional difficulties using an interpreter to learn each student’s personal story and how some children refused to discuss aspects of their long journeys to the U.S., a decision she respected despite her innate curiosity. Interviewing these young adults enhanced Thorpe’s understanding of the world, and reading her story will entertain and enlighten readers, creating a wider, more sympathetic view of the world and its inhabitants—certainly something we need right now.
Humane and informative stories about refugees and their plights in America.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5909-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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