A tender memoir notable for its modest voice and delicate prose.
How the author, in making a new home, renewed her faith in family, friends and love.
On Sept. 12, 2001, Ploughshares editor in chief Randolph (Writing, Literature, and Publishing/Emerson Coll.; A Sandhills Ballad, 2009, etc.) and her husband made an offer on a house so derelict that it needed to be rebuilt from the ground up. Although making any life-altering decisions seemed both risky and frivolous, Randolph felt that living in the country might afford them some safety: They would have a well, enough land to grow food and room to shelter their families. “These strange survivalist thoughts surprised me,” she writes, “but in the wake of the attacks on the World Trade Center, thinking logically was perhaps not anyone’s first concern.” Randolph had not wanted to sell the family’s house in Lincoln, Nebraska, that she and her husband had lovingly restored—and painted pink. But his longing to live in the country finally persuaded her. In this gently told narrative, the author weaves together a month-by-month diary of their arduous renovations with a memoir of the many houses in which she grew up on the Nebraska plains, a brief first marriage that ended tragically and her difficult second marriage. She painfully extricated herself from that relationship, fighting for custody of her children, and liberated herself, also, from her family’s fundamentalist religion. “Despite feeling less burdened now that I’ve laid my faith aside,” she admits, “I’ll confess I feel life is less magical, less intensely personal, too. While I had faith, I felt I was the center of a meaningful drama, part of the vital fight over my soul.” Rebuilding her house, though, grounded her in unexpected ways: Fearful of change, she discovered that “stability is a state of mind as much as it is a state of being.” Rather than regret her loss of religion, she rediscovered her belief “in its most important tenets: love, forgiveness, mercy.”
A tender memoir notable for its modest voice and delicate prose.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1609382742
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Univ. of Iowa
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2014
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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