A straightforward account of a life focused on karate.
A debut memoir recounts a man’s ascent through the ranks of karate, from white belt to Hall of Fame black belt.
Born and raised in Miami, the author initially became interested in karate through the films of Bruce Lee. In the early 1980s, after being assaulted by some older boys, the 14-year-old Ferguson decided to learn self-defense and chose karate. Though initially shy and reserved, he grew more confident in his classes, and he began to rise in the ranks, earning his third belt—the green belt—within nine months. The author clearly describes the various tests he had to complete to gain his belts as well as the sense of community that was fostered by his teachers, Hanshi Moises and Sensei Benny Colon. They not only brought their students to compete in tournaments, but also regularly treated them to camping trips or cookouts. Besides acquiring considerable physical skills, Ferguson writes that he also gained another family. After four years of training, he received his black belt, becoming the first to ever reach that rank under Moises and Colon. Ferguson then left Miami after eight years of training, and no matter where he moved—first to Savannah, Georgia; then Jacksonville; and finally back to Miami—he remained involved in the karate community and even opened his own dojo in Savannah. In 2017, after nearly 40 years in the discipline, he was enshrined into the United States Black Belt Hall of Fame. In his book, which features black-and-white photographs of the author and other karate practitioners, Ferguson’s prose is very matter-of-fact and rarely reflective. While his achievements are impressive, readers are not always given much insight into what they meant to the author at the time, and what they signify to him now. The writing is most engaging when Ferguson discusses his mentors and the teachers who have helped him along the way; the compelling passages are filled with reverence and love for this circle. But the author occasionally gets bogged down in terminology and minutiae that will likely leave karate neophytes confused, and the sections about his teaching style lack specific examples.
A straightforward account of a life focused on karate.Pub Date: March 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5043-9481-9
Page Count: 108
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A heartfelt and haunting memoir just right for the current political and social climate.
An acclaimed Mexican-born poet’s account of the sometimes-overwhelming struggles he and his parents faced in their quest to become American citizens.
Hernandez Castillo (Cenzontle, 2018, etc.) first came to the United States with his undocumented Mexican parents in 1993. But life in the shadows came at a high price. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided their home on multiple occasions and eventually deported the author’s father back to Mexico. In this emotionally raw memoir, Hernandez Castillo explores his family’s traumas through a fractured narrative that mirrors their own fragmentation. Of his own personal experiences, he writes, “when I came undocumented to the U.S., I crossed into a threshold of invisibility.” To protect himself against possible identification as an undocumented person, he excelled in school and learned English “better than any white person, any citizen.” When he was old enough to work, he created a fake social security card to apply for the jobs that helped him support his fatherless family. After high school, he attended college and married a Mexican American woman. He became an MFA student at the University of Michigan and qualified for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which allowed him to visit his father in Mexico, where he discovered the depth of his cultural disorientation. Battling through ever present anxiety, the author revisited his and his parents’ origins and then returned to take on the difficult interview that qualified him for a green card. His footing in the U.S. finally solidified, Hernandez Castillo unsuccessfully attempted to help his father and mother qualify for residency in the U.S. Only after his father was kidnapped by members of a drug cartel was the author able to help his mother, whose life was now in danger, seek asylum in the U.S. Honest and unsparing, this book offers a detailed look at the dehumanizing immigration system that shattered the author’s family while offering a glimpse into his own deeply conflicted sense of what it means to live the so-called American dream.
A heartfelt and haunting memoir just right for the current political and social climate.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-282559-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
Lionel Dahmer, father of mass murderer Jeffrey Dahmer, here writes one of the most courageous, unsensational books ever written about serial murder. It does not even summarize Jeffrey's crimes. Dahmer takes upon himself much of the guilt for his son's acts by considering a genetic predisposition to murder he may have passed on to his son; various acts of his own moral blindness that may have contributed to his son's deprived emotional being; and things he did and didn't do when certain symptoms appeared that might have alerted him to Jeffrey's lust for sexual atrocity. What parts of the father, the book asks, are replicated in the son? Largely, Jeffrey is a failure whose failings were earlier those of his father, though the father overcame each failing as its pain grew. Intellectually and physically inferior as a child, Lionel was tutored by his parents from first grade on, and by dint of hard study earned a doctorate in chemistry. A puny child, he took up body-building as a teenager and turned himself into a fine physical specimen. But he also had murderous dreams from which he would awake trembling. Jeffrey's mother was also a depressive, and her excessive pill-taking during pregnancy may well have damaged Jeffrey's genes. As a child, he developed a testicular hernia that, when treated by surgery, gave him a fear of castration and seemed to lead into lasting withdrawal from his family and friendships and, by the time he was 15, into alcoholism and a liking for dead things. Lionel sees Jeffrey's main psychotic trigger lying in a need to control: his own need for intellectual and physical control resulted in a glass wall between himself and Jeffrey; Jeffrey's need for control grew into a need for drugged or dead lovers who submitted to him absolutely. Clear, modest, intelligent—and extremely disturbing.
Pub Date: March 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-688-12156-X
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1994
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