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MY FATHER’S RIFLE

Name: MY FATHER’S RIFLE
Author: Hiner Saleem
ISBN: 0-374-21693-2

A CHILDHOOD IN KURDISTAN

by Hiner Saleem & translated by Catherine Temerson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 2005

Timely—and most depressing.

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Well-done but dispiriting memoir of growing up in Iraq during the 1960s and ’70s, when Kurdish aspirations for independence were increasingly suppressed.

Now a filmmaker living in Paris, Saleem memorably depicts the close family ties and the comfort of Kurdish culture. His story also grimly reminds us of the Kurds’ long-time persecution by Turks, Iranians, and, most recently, Saddam Hussein. Perhaps understandably, considering how badly they have been treated, the Kurds too have contemplated violent solutions to their problem. Saleem’s father, who kept a rifle on hand, supported General Barzani, a Kurdish military leader who led a group of armed guerrillas into the mountains in hopes of establishing an independent state. His older brother, 18-year-old Dilovan, joined them, and later, when the Baathist party took over Iraq and bombed their village, adolescent Saleem also wanted to work for the cause of independence. At one point the family fled to the mountains to fight with Kurdish troops, but the resistance was forcibly quashed. After a dreary spell in a refugee camp, they decided to return to their native village of Aqra. Under Saddam’s leadership in the late 1970s, Iraqis increased their efforts to eliminate the Kurds. In measured prose, Saleem recalls soldiers arriving in their village and setting up barracks, where they were rumored to torture Kurds. Baathist teachers took over the schools, and Iraqi doctors would not help his sick niece, who eventually died. His education was cut short: instruction at school was only in Arabic, a language he did not know, and opportunities for further study were denied to Kurds. Saleem knew there was no way he could go to film school. Increasingly he began to accept that exile might be his only option, though even that would not be easy, since Kurds were denied passports.

Timely—and most depressing.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2005

ISBN: 0-374-21693-2

Page Count: 112

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2004

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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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.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)