Gravano’s dishy tell-all about growing up in the shadow of her father, Sammy "The Bull" Gravano.
The author, a star of the VH1 reality-TV show Mob Wives, delivers a memoir that's the literary equivalent of reality TV. Now 39, Gravano grew up in Brooklyn, where her father worked in construction, ran nightclubs and served as the Gambino family underboss. Much of what Gravano recalls qualifies hers as a healthy, happy girlhood. Married, her parents insisted on regular family dinners during which everyone would share something they'd learned that day. The other part, though, concerning how she came to understand her father's role in the mafia and what it meant for her family, stands in stark contrast to anyone's idea of a normal childhood. She knew from a young age that her father was a criminal, but her fierce loyalty to him has never wavered and her perspective is decidedly one-sided: "Seeing my father upset made me feel like the cops were the bad guys." At another point, after witnessing his fight with a landscape designer, Gravano writes, "My father was very fair when it came to the bottom line, and he expected the people he dealt with to be honest and reasonable as well." The author’s worship of her father makes her views on the man read as somewhat delusional, especially considering his lengthy criminal history. Readable but neither scintillating nor illuminating.
Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-250-00305-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
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