A captivating and inspiring immigration story.
In this debut biography, a Vietnamese woman escapes her authoritarian country with her family to become an entrepreneurial success in the United States.
Many years ago, Hieu Vo knew that she couldn’t continue to live in Communist-controlled Vietnam—the government ruled its citizens with fear and relentless indoctrination, and she wanted a better life for her kids. Her husband, Tien, once an aspiring lawyer, was singled out by the government as suspicious and sent to work a menial job outside of Saigon as part of a plan to break his spirit. Hieu’s mother, Thi Ba, organized an escape for Hieu and her family by boat; Thi traded gold on the black market, which was an invaluable commodity after the national currency collapsed, and so she was plugged into the world of illicit exchange. But Hieu and her family were soon captured and sent to languish in prison, and author Driver captures her terrifying experience in unflinching prose: “she watched her children suffering in the environment. They became skinnier and skinnier, weaker and weaker. Khoa and Gialai grew so weak, they even lost their desire to be children.” After the family was finally released, Hieu immediately began planning a second escape attempt while waiting for her malnourished children’s strength to return. They finally made it by boat to Hong Kong, and then to America, where Hieu was known as “Charlie” and trained to become a manicurist. She eventually opened her own shop, ManTrap, which became a successful chain. Driver’s engrossing biography relates a remarkable series of accomplishments, conveying them in cinematically dramatic terms and highlighting Hieu’s indomitable spirit. Along the way, she deftly shares the history of the manicure industry, as well, showing how it became a support system for many Asian refugees and sometimes dealt with raids by government inspectors. Overall, Driver’s account is affecting and instructive throughout.
A captivating and inspiring immigration story.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-63152-626-8
Page Count: 203
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: July 11, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
