A well-wrought, inspiring tale of “change and justice” in a part of the world where they are often sorely lacking.
An impassioned tale of how an unusual Kenyan NGO became globally galvanized by the romance between its embattled Nairobi director and a resolute young Wesleyan University student.
Hailing from the Kibera slums and facing enormous obstacles, Odede managed to start the Shining Hope for Communities program, offering support to a community in crisis. Posner, an American student from a well-off Denver family, in turn became the COO of the program. The two alternate telling this uplifting and courageous story of how they met and fell in love. Odede is truly a survivor of the worst kind of marginalization of the invisible poor in the Kibera slum (“survival was improbable”). Born to an unmarried teenage woman (a breech birth, no less, one of the many miracles in his life), Odede eventually ran away from home at age 10 after being unable to stand any more abuse at the hands of his stepfather. Years of street life, theft, and drugs drove him to seek help from the white missionaries, and he eventually received the funds for an education. Posner arrived at the SHOFCO office for a Wesleyan internship in 2007, determined to brave the appalling living conditions of the slum (open sewers, rats and other vermin, scant water, complete lack of privacy) and cohabitate with Odede in disarming chastity. The authors tell a moving love story that crosses a chasm of different cultural beliefs and expectations, culminating in Odede’s refuge at Wesleyan with a full scholarship. He had to flee his country after nearly being murdered by ethnic-driven gang violence following the rigged election of President Mwai Kibaki. Aside from the authors’ developing romance, what is so impressive is Odede’s commitment to the empowerment of young women after seeing so many rapes, violence, and indignities inflicted on the women in his own family.
A well-wrought, inspiring tale of “change and justice” in a part of the world where they are often sorely lacking.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-229285-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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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