A compassionate perspective on prison life.
A newly minted librarian discovers the importance of reading for prison inmates.
In 2008, with a fresh degree and few job prospects, Grunenwald (Running with a Police Escort: Tales from the Back of the Pack, 2017) took her first professional position in a men’s minimum security prison in her native Ohio. Although she came to her new job with part-time experience in public libraries and a master’s degree in library and information science, she felt completely unprepared for the restrictive prison environment. “I had neither intended nor set out to become a prison librarian,” she admits, not even fully understanding what a “correctional facility” really entailed. In a forthright, gently told memoir, the author portrays herself as both naïve and well-intentioned as she deals with inmates—mostly serving time for drunken driving charges or drug convictions—for whom a prison library meets a range of needs. Some read local newspapers, some consult law books or, with limited access, LexisNexis; one inmate confesses that he wants to read the books he should have read in high school; a few take the opportunity to hide behind bookshelves to masturbate—one of the many infractions that Grunenwald must report. The library also serves as a place of respite. For inmates who work as library assistants as well as for those who come to read, the library is “a unique pocket of freedom” within the highly regimented and surveilled prison. What Grunenwald encountered on her first day was a huge mess: outdated reference books, mixed-up encyclopedia volumes, inadequate shelving, unprocessed donation books, and two computers for inmate use, one of which was continually broken. In addition, she confronted a plethora of rules that governed inmate behavior, movement, and her own responsibilities. Quickly, she had to establish her authority. “Power in prison is in constant flux,” she notes, with inmates having the power “to inspire fear within the staff.” After 20 months, “tired and burned out,” Grunenwald left for another job, hoping she helped some inmates to develop a real love of books.
A compassionate perspective on prison life.Pub Date: July 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5107-3706-8
Page Count: 360
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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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