Neither a nuanced political analysis nor a typical comedian’s laughfest.
Give fists a chance.
As a boyhood veteran of the Sacramento punk scene, Jensen became uncomfortably familiar with white supremacy before it began veering toward mainstream acceptability. In this scattered collection of polemics, broadsides, stand-up routines, social commentary, and personal anecdotes, the street-wise author and comedian mainly leads with his heart. His heart tells him that racism is wrong, wrong enough to deserve a punch in the nose whenever one encounters it. However, he notes early on, “full disclosure; I’ve never punched a Nazi. This is my great shame.” Regardless, Jensen supports those who do, even if he admits that sometimes those folks are just looking for a brawl. Take his ambivalence toward a group that some readers might not know: “The SHARPS, Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice.” You have to be up on your cultural codes and tribes to understand that shaved “skinheads” originally embraced everything about Jamaica: the culture, the rhythms, the black musicians—until the shorn style was adopted by militant white racists who transformed that culture into their stomping grounds. Hence the SHARPS, who represent a rejection of that racist stereotype and a return to the original ethos—ostensibly. A club promoter suggested to the author that they weren’t really effective anti-Nazi warriors but rather “just dudes who wanted to fight. They cloaked it in some kind of ideal but they were just dudes who wanted to fight.” Jensen admits to his own ambivalence: “I didn’t like a lot of the SHARPS, and I loved several of them,” before concluding, “whatever other issues I may have had with them, I will always admire them for their Nazi punching. Well done, crew, well done.” His sentiment toward Antifa—the aggressive anti-fascist protestors—is similar: “If you think Antifa groups are as bad as Nazis, please stop being the right’s tool.” This is a book about right and wrong, and if right stops wrong with a punch, so much the better.
Neither a nuanced political analysis nor a typical comedian’s laughfest.Pub Date: June 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5107-3374-9
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 2, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2018
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
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
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