A brassy, forthright autobiography from the flamboyant, cross- dressing black diva made famous by John Berendt's bestselling Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. As Berendt's admiring introduction notes, The Lady Chablis is a legal name, adopted as much for copyright protection as to define her identity. That's typical of the savvy, self-promoting Grand Empress of Savannah: She bills herself as a performance artist rather than as a drag queen. Controlling perceptions of herself (and generally getting her way) is a top priority for the willful Chablis. Labels having always been an issue, she prefers to name herself. Chablis's talent emerged early; she started performing in drag at age 14. Her defiant embrace of femininity earned beatings from her abusive parents but acceptance from small-town Florida neighbors. Chablis candidly relates a string of professional and personal troubles, including struggles with drugs and alcohol, battles with unscrupulous club owners, and a series of unsatisfactory romances; her honesty provides substance beneath the sass. Like her nightclub act, which evolved from lip-synching disco tunes to politically charged monologues, her life, as she comes to see it, is about the struggle to find a voice and to gain respect. After she's arrested for the possession of drugs (she has to explain why she calls herself Brenda Knox when her driver's license says that she is Benjamin Knox, her birth name), Chablis confronts the question of how to force the world to accept her as a woman. She considers but rejects sex-change surgery, opting instead to be her outrageous self without giving up her ``candy.'' She remains a preoperative transsexual, a clinical definition that answers the most tiresome question directed at her but inadequately describes the verve and boldness with which she has lived her life and recounts it here (aided by freelance writer Bouloukos). A funny, combative walk on the wild side, told with tremendous heart and charm. (photos, not seen) (Author tour)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-671-52094-6
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1996
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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