by Jeanne White with Susan Dworkin ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1997
A simple but affecting memoir of one mother's tragedies and triumphs in the age of AIDS, written with the help fo Dworkin, a former editor of Ms. magazine. White, whose son Ryan became the center of a controversy concerning AIDS, begins her journey into the devastating world of parenting an ill child by learning to cope with the demands of her newborn son's hemophilia. This is challenge enough for any parent, but when Ryan is diagnosed with AIDS in late 1984, White's trials take on far deeper dimensions. What makes this memoir particularly worthwhile is the author's account of the impact of Ryan's illness on her and those around her. Ryan's father is unable to cope, and the couple eventually divorce. Ryan's sister avoids all reporters, even when her brother becomes a media star. Neighbors and friends shun the boy and his family, resorting to legal action to keep him out of the classroom. When Ryan does get back to school, he is taunted with cries of ``faggot'' and is isolated. Reporters sympathetic to her son receive death threats. Yet White prevails. Although she has grown up in a community that views homosexuals as sinners, she comes to see them not as transgressors but as her allies. And never does White lose her faith in God. Instead of perceiving her son's illness as a punishment, she sees it as a test. She writes, ``I felt that handling the tests that life brought you was how you worked your way into Heaven.'' The book cannot be considered a treatment of your typical child victim of AIDS, as Ryan was lavishly attended to by the likes of Michael Jackson and Elton John (whose names are dropped all too often). Nonetheless, this is a fine tribute, on the seventh anniversary of his death, from a mother to a son whose spirit touched the world. (First printing of 40,000; author tour)
Pub Date: April 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-380-97328-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1997
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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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