by Jack Marshall ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2005
The word “Baghdad” in the title may prompt some readers to pull this from the shelves, but they will likely be disappointed.
A predictable memoir about an immigrant son’s struggle to find himself.
Poet Marshall’s parents were Sephardic Jews—Dad from Baghdad, Mom from Aleppo—who immigrated to America and entered into an ill-advised marriage in New York. Marshall’s home life was different from those of other Jewish kids in Brooklyn: His parents, for instance, whether swearing or offering praise, denoted God not by the Hebrew “Ha-Shem” or “Eloheem,” but by the Arabic “Allah.” As he moved into adolescence, Marshall had an increasingly difficult time reconciling science and literature with traditional Jewish teaching. As a last ditch effort to shore up faith, he enrolled, on a generous scholarship, in the rabbinical program at Yeshiva University—but he didn’t last long. The siren song of the poets snagged him instead, and he took refuge in the main reading room of the main branch of the New York Public Library, reading “thirsty as a castaway at a free tap,” keeping company with the words of Hart Crane and Dylan Thomas. The end of this memoir finds Marshall setting sail, figuratively and literally: Broke but determined to see the world, he found work on the SS Ferngrove and . . . off he went. The text is littered with too-cute lines (e.g., “any Orthodox rabbi worth his kosher Crystal salt”). Marshall has a unique heritage, but not enough of this story feels original or fresh.
The word “Baghdad” in the title may prompt some readers to pull this from the shelves, but they will likely be disappointed.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2005
ISBN: 1-56689-174-4
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Coffee House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
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by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992
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
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by William Strunk & E.B. White ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 15, 1972
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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