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KEPT IN THE DARK

Name: KEPT IN THE DARK
Author: J. Ronald M. York
ISBN: 978-0-9982734-0-2

by J. Ronald M. York ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 24, 2017

A provocative collection of family correspondence, but one that will leave readers with unanswered questions.

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A largely epistolary debut memoir about a shocking family secret.

After his father’s death in 2000, philanthropist and gallery owner York writes, he discovered a boxful of letters and newspaper clippings in his parents’ shed. When he read its contents, he says, he learned that in the 1950s, when York was 2 years old, his father, Bob, spent two months in a Miami jail after his arrest for sexually abusing a minor in the Boy Scout troop that he led. During his father’s incarceration, he and York’s mother, Joyce, exchanged letters nearly daily. In addition, most evenings, the young author and his mom would park on the street outside the jail, so that Bob could see them from his window. He and Joyce exchanged signals—mostly about the status of his case—by flashing car headlights or lighting matches. In the letters, both parents communicated their frustration with the slow progress of the legal process but also affirmed their love and devotion to each other. Joyce also related news about the young author, as well as of other family members and friends. These family relationships were complicated, however, by the fact that Bob’s accuser was his nephew—Joyce’s sister’s son. York brackets this collection with his own commentary; the chapters before the letters provide background and brief biographical information, and those following relate what happened after Bob was released from jail. The author says that he didn’t learn of his father’s crime and incarceration until after both his parents had died, and that despite his efforts, he couldn’t find much information beyond what was in the letters themselves; as a result, readers will be left to wonder about some aspects of the story—for example, if Joyce’s support and forgiveness were as complete as the letters suggest. York’s inclusion of numerous family photographs, however, effectively illustrates how the author’s mother strove to make his life as normal as possible, and images of the documents add visual interest. York writes that he was a victim of unrelated sexual abuse himself, which made it difficult for him to process this previously unsuspected information about his father, whom he loved. Indeed, he neither makes excuses nor questions his parent’s guilt in this narrative. Instead, he presents the facts as he knows them and allows readers to draw their own conclusions.

A provocative collection of family correspondence, but one that will leave readers with unanswered questions.

Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-9982734-0-2

Page Count: 302

Publisher: St. Broadway Press

Review Posted Online: Jan. 23, 2017

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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IN MY PLACE

by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992

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From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992

ISBN: 0-374-17563-2

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

- BOOK REVIEW
MY PEOPLE
by Charlayne Hunter-Gault

- BOOK REVIEW
TO THE MOUNTAINTOP
by Charlayne Hunter-Gault

- BOOK REVIEW
NEW NEWS OUT OF AFRICA
by Charlayne Hunter-Gault

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A LITTLE HISTORY OF POETRY

by John Carey ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 21, 2020

Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.

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A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.

In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.

Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.