An impassioned, inspiring motivational manifesto.
An African-American man shares his evolution from drug dealer to college-graduate professional, social analysis, and empowerment tips in this debut motivational memoir.
Barlow describes his narrative, aimed particularly at minority youth, as a “semi- autobiographical/motivational book based on the premise that no one is born a failure…period.” Instead, “minorities must contend with a plethora of obstacles which are mainly a result of the disparate treatment they have endured for generations.” After providing supporting statistics, Barlow segues into his life story. Born in Harlem in 1971, he was abandoned by his mother at an early age and primarily raised by his father and grandmother. His father encouraged him to be a critical thinker and held a regular job, but had money-management issues, having “been a hustler for most of his life…used to fast money.” At age 13, Barlow became a drug dealer’s lookout and then a pusher himself, dropping out of high school at 16. At 18, after almost getting arrested a second time, which would have meant significant jail time, Barlow moved back with his grandmother, finished high school at night while working regular jobs, and then attended and graduated from college. Now “a senior legal assistant, easily grossing six figures,” Barlow is proud that “my relationship with my daughters is the testament of a misguided teenager who evolved into a well-rounded man and exemplary father.” Close to this volume’s midpoint, the author offers his “blueprint for success,” focused on how to become an “intellectual gangsta” (with a helpful reading list provided) and concluding with social and racial commentary. The Autobiography of Malcolm X is No. 1 on the reading list, and this book has a similar intensity and advocacy. Barlow’s recollections of his days as a dealer are particularly evocative, even shocking, with the author at one point noting that he worked the same hallway with several other pushers because “there were so many customers that we still made money.” In his social criticism, Barlow addresses government involvement in the Flint, Michigan, water crisis: “The residents of Flint, Michigan, the majority of whom are black and impoverished, were knowingly allowed to drink and bathe in water contaminated with lead.”
An impassioned, inspiring motivational manifesto.Pub Date: July 27, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4834-4949-4
Page Count: 110
Publisher: Lulu
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Sedaris’s sense of life’s absurdity is on full, fine display, as is his emotional body armor. Fortunately, he has plenty of...
Known for his self-deprecating wit and the harmlessly eccentric antics of his family, Sedaris (Me Talk Pretty One Day, 2000, etc.) can also pinch until it hurts in this collection of autobiographical vignettes.
Once again we are treated to the author’s gift for deadpan humor, especially when poking fun at his family and neighbors. He draws some of the material from his youth, like the portrait of the folks across the street who didn’t own a TV (“What must it be like to be so ignorant and alone?” he wonders) and went trick-or-treating on November first. Or the story of the time his mother, after a fifth snow day in a row, chucked all the Sedaris kids out the door and locked it. To get back in, the older kids devised a plan wherein the youngest, affection-hungry Tiffany, would be hit by a car: “Her eagerness to please is absolute and naked. When we ask her to lie in the middle of the street, her only question was ‘Where?’ ” Some of the tales cover more recent incidents, such as his sister’s retrieval of a turkey from a garbage can; when Sedaris beards her about it, she responds, “Listen to you. If it didn’t come from Balducci’s, if it wasn’t raised on polenta and wild baby acorns, it has to be dangerous.” But family members’ square-peggedness is more than a little pathetic, and the fact that they are fodder for his stories doesn’t sit easy with Sedaris. He’ll quip, “Your life, your privacy, your occasional sorrow—it’s not like you're going to do anything with it,” as guilt pokes its nose around the corner of the page. Then he’ll hitch himself up and lacerate them once again, but not without affection even when the sting is strongest. Besides, his favorite target is himself: his obsessive-compulsiveness and his own membership in this company of oddfellows.
Sedaris’s sense of life’s absurdity is on full, fine display, as is his emotional body armor. Fortunately, he has plenty of both.Pub Date: June 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-316-14346-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2004
Possibly inspired by the letters Cleary has received as a children's author, this begins with second-grader Leigh Botts' misspelled fan letter to Mr. Henshaw, whose fictitious book itself derives from the old take-off title Forty Ways W. Amuse a Dog. Soon Leigh is in sixth grade and bombarding his still-favorite author with a list of questions to be answered and returned by "next Friday," the day his author report is due. Leigh is disgruntled when Mr. Henshaw's answer comes late, and accompanied by a set of questions for Leigh to answer. He threatens not to, but as "Mom keeps nagging me about your dumb old questions" he finally gets the job done—and through his answers Mr. Henshaw and readers learn that Leigh considers himself "the mediumest boy in school," that his parents have split up, and that he dreams of his truck-driver dad driving him to school "hauling a forty-foot reefer, which would make his outfit add up to eighteen wheels altogether. . . . I guess I wouldn't seem so medium then." Soon Mr. Henshaw recommends keeping a diary (at least partly to get Leigh off his own back) and so the real letters to Mr. Henshaw taper off, with "pretend," unmailed letters (the diary) taking over. . . until Leigh can write "I don't have to pretend to write to Mr. Henshaw anymore. I have learned to say what I think on a piece of paper." Meanwhile Mr. Henshaw offers writing tips, and Leigh, struggling with a story for a school contest, concludes "I think you're right. Maybe I am not ready to write a story." Instead he writes a "true story" about a truck haul with his father in Leigh's real past, and this wins praise from "a real live author" Leigh meets through the school program. Mr. Henshaw has also advised that "a character in a story should solve a problem or change in some way," a standard juvenile-fiction dictum which Cleary herself applies modestly by having Leigh solve his disappearing lunch problem with a burglar-alarmed lunch box—and, more seriously, come to recognize and accept that his father can't be counted on. All of this, in Leigh's simple words, is capably and unobtrusively structured as well as valid and realistic. From the writing tips to the divorced-kid blues, however, it tends to substitute prevailing wisdom for the little jolts of recognition that made the Ramona books so rewarding.
Pub Date: Aug. 22, 1983
ISBN: 143511096X
Page Count: 133
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1983
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