The horrifying tale of a woman imprisoned in her own body. Tavalaro was a young wife and mother in 1966 when she suffered two strokes that sent her into a coma. Although she awoke soon after, the strokes had left her paralyzed from the neck down and unable to speak. Believed to be brain-dead, she was largely abandoned by her husband. The story of Tavalaro's six-year attempt to prove herself cognizant and to be treated as such is gripping and terrifying. With the little movement she was capable of, Tavalaro tried to gain the attention of her caregivers, mostly women who referred to her as ``the vegetable'' and brutalized her with their thoughtlessness and callous words. Finally, a speech therapist, Arlene Kraat, uncovered the hospital staff's mistake. Of course, the end of one nightmare was also the beginning of another. Still paralyzed and mute, Tavalaro struggled to learn how to communicate, to gain the freedom of an electric wheelchair fitted to her needs, and to create a life of sorts within the confines of her deformed body and the often inhospitable hospital. And she continues to fight for the basic respect she deserves for having overcome the harshest of obstacles while retaining her humanity throughout. But while Tavalaro's story is compelling, her chronicle of it—compiled with much help from poet and writing instructor Tayson—is not. It often seems like reminiscences tossed together, and while Tayson claims to have been true to the author's voice, there are many passages that the reader is hard-pressed to believe emerged from Tavalaro, the poor daughter of immigrant parents and a high-school dropout who never read much more than the occasional romance novel. Still, worthy for the powerful insight it gives into the lives of the disabled. (8 pages photos, not seen)
Pub Date: April 1, 1997
ISBN: 1-56836-171-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Kodansha
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1997
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
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered...
The incredible true story of three Jewish women who survived the Holocaust.
Priska, Rachel, and Anka were married Jewish women in their early 20s when the Nazis took control of Europe. Like millions of other Jews, they were forced to give up their normal lives, all of their belongings, and their homes. Shuttled into ghettos and then off to one of the most notorious camps, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, they suffered through the Nazis’ increasing atrocities. But these three women all held a secret: they were pregnant. They were moved from Auschwitz and ended up in Mauthausen, another notorious death camp. With facing the most horrible conditions imaginable, all three gave birth right before the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender. In this meticulously detailed account, Holden (Haatchi & Little B: The Inspiring True Story of One Boy and His Dog, 2014, etc.) compiles an enormous amount of information from interviews, letters, historical records, and personal visits to the sites where this story unfolded. The graphic history places readers in the moment and provides a sense of the enduring power of love that Priska, Rachel, and Anka had for their unborn children and for the husbands they so desperately hoped to see after the war. Even though it occurred more than 70 years ago, the story’s truth is so chillingly portrayed that it seems as if it could have happened recently. These three women and their infants survived in the face of death, and, Holden writes, “their babies went on to have babies of their own and create a second and then a third generation, all of whom continue to live their lives in defiance of Hitler’s plan to erase them from history and from memory.”
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered through at the hands of the Nazis.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-237025-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2015
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