A sometimes vivid, sometimes vague first-person account of a truly dreadful life and the controversial form of therapy that helped the author come to grips with it. Unlike many therapy patients who have no recollections of childhood abuse until their therapist helps them ``recover'' the memories, Brinson recalls in detail her father's physical abuse of her, her siblings, and her mother. The book is replete with descriptions of the beatings he regularly inflicted on them during her harsh childhood on a South Carolina tobacco farm. The beginnings of her neurotic behavior are apparent in her account of these early tortured years, but as she tells it, her problems didn't fully emerge until she was married and a mother. Brinson depicts herself becoming as abusive as her father had been, spinning so far out of control that she was institutionalized. After countless suicide attempts and years in and out of psychiatric wards, she finally came under the care of Carol Wintermeyer, a clinical psychologist she grew to trust. According to Wintermeyer's preface, Brinson's problems included suicidal- homicidal tendencies, obsessive-compulsive disorder, multiple personality disorder, and neurotic tics and habits. Using hypnotherapy, Wintermeyer took Brinson back to her childhood. In one session, Brinson described hearing her mother shoot and kill her father; the desperate woman then persuaded her daughter to beat her with a belt in order to provide bruises that would mitigate her crime in the eyes of a court. Without offering a conclusion about whether or not this was a recovered memory of an actual event, Brinson makes it the key to understanding and integrating her shattered personality and to accepting herself as a less-than-perfect person. Although the author recounts her childhood with gritty detail, her adult life remains blurry, and what she reveals about her therapy is minimal. Those hoping for insight into the much-disputed practice of eliciting long-buried memories of abuse from psychiatric patients will be disappointed. Decidedly unsatisfactory as a portrait of recovery from mental illness.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-88282-126-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: New Horizon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1994
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
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
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