An affecting self-portrait of perseverance in the face of misfortune.
In this debut memoir, a Sri Lankan man chronicles his struggles with sexual identity and a serious illness.
Rodrigo was born in a suburban neighborhood in Sri Lanka, and while his family wasn’t affluent, they were able to live in his grandmother’s sizable mansion. The author was always self-consciously aware of the ways in which he was divided from others—his dark skin and hip bone condition that plagued him all of his youth, forcing him to wear a cumbrous metal brace on his leg as he slept. But mostly, a sense of isolation issued from his burgeoning sexual identity—he liked to design clothes for dolls and dreamed of wearing women’s clothes: “I wanted to be the mom, so I could wear the sari with peacock feathers. Though Amma didn’t wear makeup, Akka had some. But I was a boy. I didn’t want people to laugh at me. The saris continued to tempt, however. I wanted to look beautiful like a mermaid.” Rodrigo found some solace in theater, enthusiastically acting in school productions of The Merchant of Venice and The Importance of Being Earnest—in the latter, he played Lady Bracknell, fulfilling a dream. But he still found it necessary in high school to play the role of the straight boy in order to avoid bullying and harassment. He won a scholarship to an American college and then eventually pursued a doctorate in English. But Rodrigo’s academic achievements were often overshadowed by his increasing physical disability, the result of multiple sclerosis. The author’s remembrance is plainly but beautifully written, the power of the prose embedded in its intrepid candor. Rodrigo’s life is one beset by adversity, but he maintains a remarkably cheerful gratitude for it nonetheless (“I constantly remind myself how small I am in the greater scheme of things, but at the same time, that I could do something even when my aging and gradually rotting body might be uncooperative….I have a good life and keep myself busy. I can still dream”). With searing poignancy, he captures both the exhilaration and pain of experiencing one’s difference, the dynamic interplay between uniqueness and alienation. In addition, while the focus of the book is personal, he provides an astute account of the ethnic and political divisions that roiled Sri Lanka.
An affecting self-portrait of perseverance in the face of misfortune.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-692-78396-2
Page Count: 234
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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