by Jafar Yaghoobi ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 26, 2011
A timely, inspiring story of the triumph of the human spirit in the face of oppression.
Yaghoobi chronicles his experiences as a political prisoner in Iran from 1984 to 1989.
In 1979, an idealistic young graduate with a doctorate in genetics, the author returned to Iran to participate in “one of the largest popular revolutions in modern history.” He became active in a secular left-wing political organization. Five years later, he was arrested and held without trial, as part of a sweep against opposition groups that was organized by the Khomeini regime to consolidate its police-state power. Interrogated, tortured and kept in solitary confinement for months, Yaghoobi was terrified but managed to resist police efforts to force him to become an informer. Finally, he was moved in with other prisoners, into a situation in which prison authorities arbitrarily granted and removed privileges and living conditions were changed without warning as prisoners were shifted to different cell configurations and moved to different prisons. In response, the prisoners engaged in group resistance, even resorting to hunger strikes on occasion, and organized their communal-living situation, holding classes and sharing food and housekeeping tasks. Close friendships developed, and members of different political groups which opposed each other on the outside managed to collaborate while they were in prison. The situation, though difficult, remained tolerable until July 1988, when an armed rebellion broke out against the ruling regime. In reprisal, more than one-third of the political prisoners were summarily executed. A year later, Yaghoobi was finally released from prison and gained asylum in the United States. He remains a passionate human-rights advocate, but despite his desire to see regime change, he warns against efforts by foreign powers to impose changes on Iran.
A timely, inspiring story of the triumph of the human spirit in the face of oppression.Pub Date: April 26, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-61614-449-4
Page Count: 390
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2011
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006
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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