by June Juanico ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 16, 1997
Juanico, the King's purported first love, offers a portrait of the young Presley that is intriguing, even touching, yet finally unbelievable. Juanico recalls her relationship with Elvis, from 1955 to '57, with bittersweet humor and good nature. She offers further detail on his fascination with fast cars, describes her tour of Florida with him, and includes her recollections of his infamous first appearance on the Ed Sullivan show. All of this is told with an eye toward detail, apparently derived from Juanico's habit of keeping journals. However, certain aspects of her tale don't jibe with those of other biographers (one of whom, Peter Guralnick, offers an introduction to this volume). For instance, in three separate incidents Juanico seems to suggest that Elvis was deeply aware of (and uncomfortable about) the nature of life for blacks in the Jim Crow South. The incidents include a bowling match in Memphis against a black team from Detroit, where Juanico states that she was ``determined to show the Northern team what true Southern hospitality was all about.'' What's strange about these references to racial turmoil is not only that they seem completely out of context, but that most other books on Presley have noted his casual use of the ``n-word.'' Juanico either conveniently forgets this or just plain omits it in her account, in the interest of a more desirable portrait. In fact, Presley is depicted as downright prudish in many situations, despite all the indications that he was at heart a wild-eyed southern boy. Finally, after tolerating countless implications of affairs—not the least of which concerned the young Natalie Wood—Juanico abruptly broke off her unconsummated relationship with Elvis, having come to realize that his life left little room for a wife and family. Elvis is undoubtedly a must-read for die-hard devotees of the King, but it doesn't rival previous portraits of the man in depth or originality. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Aug. 16, 1997
ISBN: 1-55970-393-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1997
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by Ta-Nehisi Coates ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 8, 2015
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
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The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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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