Sure to excite controversy, a strong indictment that turns over large stones and finds hellish serpents underneath.
An ugly true tale of pastoral wrongdoing by lapsed Catholic and accomplished reporter van der Zee (The Gate, 1987, etc.).
In the diocese of Santa Rosa, California, until very recently, the corruption began at the top, with a sexually predatory bishop who responded to charges that one of his priests had been embezzling funds by embarking on a years-long affair with that subordinate, diverting yet more dollars from the church into the priest’s bank account to secure his silence. Though victimized, the priest deserved little sympathy; he was in essence a con man practicing religion without a license, and he found himself in an ideal position to blackmail the boss. In the meanwhile, van der Zee chronicles, other priests and monsignors in the remote diocese—a place to which clerics who had committed crimes or sins elsewhere had long been banished—were busily preying on teenage boys, siphoning funds, and otherwise doing things holy men are not supposed to do. Not that this is a surprise, van der Zee writes in one of his analytical asides; citing a study by a former Benedictine, he estimates that only half of all priests practice celibacy, while of the rest “ten percent have homosexual behaviors, five percent are problem masturbators, four percent are ephebephiles—involved with adolescent partners—two percent are pedophiles and one percent are transvestites.” Regardless of the soundness of those figures, it’s clear to van der Zee that the sexual scandals now embroiling the Church have much to do with the exclusion of married heterosexuals and women from the priesthood—and with a culture that, as in the Santa Rosa diocese, protects its persistent sinners rather than exacting confession and punishment.
Sure to excite controversy, a strong indictment that turns over large stones and finds hellish serpents underneath.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2003
ISBN: 1-56025-471-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2002
However charily one should apply the word, a beautiful book, an unconditionally involving memoir for our time or any time.
Maya Angelou is a natural writer with an inordinate sense of life and she has written an exceptional autobiographical narrative which retrieves her first sixteen years from "the general darkness just beyond the great blinkers of childhood."
Her story is told in scenes, ineluctably moving scenes, from the time when she and her brother were sent by her fancy living parents to Stamps, Arkansas, and a grandmother who had the local Store. Displaced they were and "If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat." But alternating with all the pain and terror (her rape at the age of eight when in St. Louis With her mother) and humiliation (a brief spell in the kitchen of a white woman who refused to remember her name) and fear (of a lynching—and the time they buried afflicted Uncle Willie under a blanket of vegetables) as well as all the unanswered and unanswerable questions, there are affirmative memories and moments: her charming brother Bailey; her own "unshakable God"; a revival meeting in a tent; her 8th grade graduation; and at the end, when she's sixteen, the birth of a baby. Times When as she says "It seemed that the peace of a day's ending was an assurance that the covenant God made with children, Negroes and the crippled was still in effect."
However charily one should apply the word, a beautiful book, an unconditionally involving memoir for our time or any time.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1969
ISBN: 0375507892
Page Count: 235
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1969
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
A welcome addition to the literature on immigration told by an author who understands the issue like few others.
The debut book from “one of the first undocumented immigrants to graduate from Harvard.”
In addition to delivering memorable portraits of undocumented immigrants residing precariously on Staten Island and in Miami, Cleveland, Flint, and New Haven, Cornejo Villavicencio, now enrolled in the American Studies doctorate program at Yale, shares her own Ecuadorian family story (she came to the U.S. at age 5) and her anger at the exploitation of hardworking immigrants in the U.S. Because the author fully comprehends the perils of undocumented immigrants speaking to journalist, she wisely built trust slowly with her subjects. Her own undocumented status helped the cause, as did her Spanish fluency. Still, she protects those who talked to her by changing their names and other personal information. Consequently, readers must trust implicitly that the author doesn’t invent or embellish. But as she notes, “this book is not a traditional nonfiction book….I took notes by hand during interviews and after the book was finished, I destroyed those notes.” Recounting her travels to the sites where undocumented women, men, and children struggle to live above the poverty line, she reports her findings in compelling, often heart-wrenching vignettes. Cornejo Villavicencio clearly shows how employers often cheat day laborers out of hard-earned wages, and policymakers and law enforcement agents exist primarily to harm rather than assist immigrants who look and speak differently. Often, cruelty arrives not only in economic terms, but also via verbal slurs and even violence. Throughout the narrative, the author explores her own psychological struggles, including her relationships with her parents, who are considered “illegal” in the nation where they have worked hard and tried to become model residents. In some of the most deeply revealing passages, Cornejo Villavicencio chronicles her struggles reconciling her desire to help undocumented children with the knowledge that she does not want "kids of my own." Ultimately, the author’s candor about herself removes worries about the credibility of her stories.
A welcome addition to the literature on immigration told by an author who understands the issue like few others.Pub Date: May 19, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-399-59268-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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