Irreverent, vulnerable, and unapologetic in every sense.
Detroit-based model, blogger, and activist Vernon describes life caught between the societal boxes of white and Islamic cultures.
Narrating the story of her life, the author takes aim at the societal vitriol directed at those living in fat, black, and Muslim bodies. “Deciding, really deciding, to unapologetically wear my hijab for me has been the most freeing and rebellious and feminist thing I could possibly do,” she writes. In a brash, slang-heavy text, Vernon—whose work has appeared in Elle, Seventeen, Teen Vogue, and the New York Times, among other publications—speaks to experiences often concealed within her communities, including mental illness, divorce, abortion, domestic violence, child sexual abuse, and body-shaming. “Self-worth was a roller coaster,” she writes, “and mine was usually attached to what I could and couldn’t fit into.” Though these traumas have deeply impacted the trajectory of Vernon’s life, she takes care to enthusiastically portray her triumphs: her escape from a dysfunctional marriage, her personal flourishing as she embarked on a plus-size modeling career, and the creation of her semiviral video, “Muslim Girl Dance.” Vernon’s narration reads like an intimate heart-to-heart chat with a friend; while her off-the-cuff riffing is infectious, the storytelling occasionally rambles. Readers may balk at the author’s apparent disdain for incarcerated people and women who have casual sex, and not everyone will understand the hard-won wisdom behind “Angry Black Bitch,” Vernon’s inner persona that turned racist, sexist, and fat-phobic aggression into the courage “[t]o step out of my comfort zone and fuckin’ live a little.” However, those looking for an imperfect hero of her own story, “with [her] own opinions and skewed outlooks and quirks,” will find this a quick, cheeky read, and her message is solid. “We are all humans with complexities,” she writes. “We are equal. We are fucked up. But we are beautiful and interesting and knowledgeable.”
Irreverent, vulnerable, and unapologetic in every sense.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8070-1262-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered...
The incredible true story of three Jewish women who survived the Holocaust.
Priska, Rachel, and Anka were married Jewish women in their early 20s when the Nazis took control of Europe. Like millions of other Jews, they were forced to give up their normal lives, all of their belongings, and their homes. Shuttled into ghettos and then off to one of the most notorious camps, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, they suffered through the Nazis’ increasing atrocities. But these three women all held a secret: they were pregnant. They were moved from Auschwitz and ended up in Mauthausen, another notorious death camp. With facing the most horrible conditions imaginable, all three gave birth right before the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender. In this meticulously detailed account, Holden (Haatchi & Little B: The Inspiring True Story of One Boy and His Dog, 2014, etc.) compiles an enormous amount of information from interviews, letters, historical records, and personal visits to the sites where this story unfolded. The graphic history places readers in the moment and provides a sense of the enduring power of love that Priska, Rachel, and Anka had for their unborn children and for the husbands they so desperately hoped to see after the war. Even though it occurred more than 70 years ago, the story’s truth is so chillingly portrayed that it seems as if it could have happened recently. These three women and their infants survived in the face of death, and, Holden writes, “their babies went on to have babies of their own and create a second and then a third generation, all of whom continue to live their lives in defiance of Hitler’s plan to erase them from history and from memory.”
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered through at the hands of the Nazis.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-237025-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2015
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