A vivid, compelling account of a life on the edge.
The mother of the 18-year-old killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014 relates the saga of her life in the St. Louis suburb, expressing her love for her children on nearly every page.
With assistance from LeFlore, McSpadden reveals her life conversationally, including the colloquial phrasings that pepper her speech. Growing up, the author’s fascination with an older high school classmate led to pregnancy at age 15 and the birth of Michael Brown nine months later. From the start, McSpadden referred to her child as "Mike Mike" and does so throughout the memoir. Brown’s death, which gained international attention, does not become the focus until more than 200 pages in. Before that, McSpadden details her life as a black female in a sometimes-racist, sometimes-supportive metropolitan area with a longstanding reputation for unequal treatment of minorities. She offers bright portrayals of her mother and mostly undependable biological father, plus dozens of other relatives, friends, and antagonists. Determined to earn her high school diploma, McSpadden eventually had to drop out to care for Mike Mike and labor at a variety of low-wage jobs. She is frank about the domestic violence she endured at the hands of the man who fathered her first two children and another man (since murdered) who fathered her third and fourth children. Unable to find satisfactory housing arrangements, the author chronicles the dizzying number of moves within the St. Louis region, sometimes commenting on the varying levels of racial segregation in each area. Eventually, McSpadden describes the apartment complex where Mike Mike was staying with his grandmother the day of his death. Regarding the controversial shooting, the author casts doubt on the robbery report involving her son, and she suggests that Mike Mike's companion during the altercation is lying about the details. Mostly, though, she chronicles her unsuccessful quest for justice within a law enforcement culture stacked against her.
A vivid, compelling account of a life on the edge.Pub Date: May 10, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-942872-52-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Regan Arts
Review Posted Online: April 10, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
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
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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