A lucid, thought-provoking tribute to Robeson by an author determined to stand where Robeson stood and imagine what he...
An Australian journalist and author walks in the footsteps of Paul Robeson (1898-1976), the gifted, celebrated, and controversial athlete, singer, actor, and social activist.
Sparrow (Money Shot: A Journey into Porn and Censorship, 2012, etc.) begins with a mention of Robeson’s appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1956 and then retreats to commence his chronology, returning us to a fuller account of that appearance more than 200 pages later. The author offers a pleasing, engaging mix of biography, social history, in-the-footsteps research, and personal reflection. His approach is to tell us a bit about what Robeson was up to and then travel to key locations to visit significant sites and interview knowledgeable people. Throughout, he chronicles his visits to places in the United States, the U.K. (including Wales), Spain, and, of course, Russia. Robeson’s “ongoing faith in the Soviet Union” was, as Sparrow shows us, the principal reason for the swift decline of his enormous popularity in America, a place where he made a small fortune because of his singing (“Ol’ Man River,” from Show Boat, the most popular song he performed) and acting (his performances in the title role of Othello—a line from it supplies the title of Sparrow’s book—were invariably sold out). The author also enlightens us on his subject’s active sex life—though Robeson managed to stay married for decades to his wife, Essie—and about his increasing involvement in the politics of freedom, which began with anti-bigotry causes in the U.S. and anti-fascism work during the struggles in Spain. Unfortunately, when his humanitarian hopes for the Soviet Union did not align with the fierce anti-communism at home, it all imploded. For years, he lived in the U.S. a virtual prisoner because he could no longer secure a passport.
A lucid, thought-provoking tribute to Robeson by an author determined to stand where Robeson stood and imagine what he thought.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-925321-85-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribe
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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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