Bleak yet inspiring evocations of hope in the midst of misery.
A collection of testimonies compiled by the members of FEMRITE, the Ugandan Women Writers’ Association, brings human-rights violations to light.
The women telling these life stories range in age from 13 to 70, and all of them have been scarred by the injustices inherent in societies that enforce women’s inequality. Gaining access to refugees forced to flee their homes, wives who have contracted HIV/AIDS from unfaithful husbands and candidates for female circumcision, the FEMRITE activists allow women who have long been silenced to speak freely about their experiences. The fact that so many of these experiences convey horror and betrayal makes for grim reading, yet some women do express gratitude to the humanitarian organizations that have sprung up in Uganda in recent years. Others find comfort in religion or children; almost all struggle daily to bear the physical and emotional pain sustained from improper medical care, unhappy marriages, war atrocities and unrelenting poverty. The editors have grouped the anecdotes into four chapters. The first addresses marital abuse and discord; the second, HIV/AIDS diagnoses; the third, war’s effects on women; and the fourth, female genital mutilation (FGM). The latter two chapters, in particular, vividly portray the agony with which these women struggle on a daily basis. To read these stories is to witness how African women bravely voice outrage and sorrow in the face of censure from those wishing to uphold entrenched cultural norms. As one woman eloquently puts it, “I wondered why culture and customs are always invoked and become sacred and unchangeable only when women try to fight for their rights.”
Bleak yet inspiring evocations of hope in the midst of misery.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-56976-842-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Lawrence Hill Books/Chicago Review
Review Posted Online: Nov. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2011
PROFILES
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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