A vivid and melancholy exploration into the mental illnesses that affected one woman's family and the radical and damaging...
A woman's search for the truth surrounding the two lobotomies performed on family members.
In this haunting memoir, Sternburg (Optic Nerve, 2005, etc.) seeks to understand why her aunts, mother, and grandmother allowed a lobotomy to be executed on her uncle Bennie after he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and, 10 years later, permitted the almost exact same treatment to be carried out on her aunt Francie. The author weaves together multiple threads: the stories handed down by her aunts and their spouses regarding Bennie and Francie; medical research and insight into lobotomies and why they were so popular for a time; and her own memories of growing up in a disjointed, unhappy family where fear and the feeling of never being good enough lurked in every room. The result is a complex balance of personal thoughts and feelings coupled with the actual and imagined dialogues that must have taken place regarding these challenging decisions. The book is a disclosure of family secrets and an airing of unhappiness, affairs, unfulfilled longings, and desires that created an atmosphere of tension, anxiety, and dread. It is not necessarily a pleasant read with a happy ending, but Sternburg’s writing is incisive, and she deeply explores the boundaries that were unjustly crossed by family members in the name of love. The author also touches on other well-known individuals whose family members had lobotomies, such as Allen Ginsberg's mother and Rosemary Kennedy. Numerous photographs of Sternburg's family, a genealogy, and a comprehensive timeline add additional useful elements to this memorable story.
A vivid and melancholy exploration into the mental illnesses that affected one woman's family and the radical and damaging operations performed to counteract these ailments.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9893604-9-4
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Hawthorne Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2015
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
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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