A convincing counterargument to anti-immigrant sentiment.
Syrian brothers take different paths of immigration, neither easy, in this thoughtful account.
The Middle East has experienced waves of violence for generations. One came in the 1980s, an early spasm of repression by the Assad regime, which sent Riyad Alkasem on a roundabout path to America. Riyad had studied law, but when he finally landed in Tennessee, he opened a restaurant serving Syrian food—one that proved so popular that, by the end of Ringer staff writer Conn’s account, Riyad is planning to open a second location. Meanwhile, his brother Bashar stayed in Syria, became a lawyer, and was on his way to a judgeship when civil war erupted and the brothers’ hometown, Raqqa, was seized by the Islamic State group (aka Daesh). “Bashar saw the world as a place filled with the wonders of God’s creation,” writes Conn. “Daesh saw it only as a place full of things to burn.” Riyad’s earlier course had led to American citizenship, and he became an ideal immigrant: a hard worker and business owner who contributed strongly to his community. But after 9/11, he was rewarded with one episode of bigoted reaction after another. Bashar’s path turned instead to Germany, for in Trump-era America, no Syrians—no Muslims, for that matter—need apply. For Riyad, “Trump emboldened the worst of America,” while for Bashar, “Germany is what Riyad has long believed the United States to be: the kind of place Ronald Reagan once called the ‘shining city upon a hill.’ ” Conn’s affecting narrative touches deeply not just on these contrasting immigration issues, with the strong implication that Germany’s gain is America’s loss, but also on how the bonds of family and old community can exist even when people are uprooted. As such, it makes a solid complement to Khaled Khalifa’s novel Death Is Hard Work (2019) as a study in how people persist and prevail in a time of terror.
A convincing counterargument to anti-immigrant sentiment.Pub Date: July 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-1718-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood.
In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. While McCurdy didn’t emerge from her childhood unscathed, she’s managed to spin her harrowing experience into a sold-out stage act and achieve a form of catharsis that puts her mind, body, and acting career at peace.
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982185-82-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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