A moving account of astonishing human courage in the leering face of human cruelty.
A profoundly grim, sanguinary account of the suffering of a young woman during the days of Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution.
Lian Xi (World Christianity/Duke Divinity School; Redeemed by Fire: The Rise of Popular Christianity in Modern China, 2010, etc.) begins with the 1965 sentencing of Lin Zhao, a poet and journalist fighting “the dark forces of repression and injustice.” She was executed in 1968; by law, her family then had to pay a 5-cent fee for the bullet. Lin Zhao had been in political trouble through most of her youth. She had a constitutional inability to lie low and instead wrote fiery poems and letters to the press and smeared images of Mao with her own blood. Compounding all of her suffering was tuberculosis. She spent time in the prison hospital, though she sometimes refused treatment. She often wrote poems and letters in her own blood. As the author reveals, she had initially been a communist, then became a devout Christian, finding in that religion some context for her suffering—and her suffering was profound: TB, harsh life in a prison cell, and physical abuse by guards and other prisoners. Readers will be astonished that she survived so long and was able to hold fast to her opposition. Most of her writing survived in government files, and Lian Xi—determined and imaginative—read her works and interviewed key figures, creating an effective tribute to a remarkable human being. The text is academic in structure (including more than 60 pages of bibliography and endnotes), but the author’s diction will appeal to general readers. He allows his own voice to emerge occasionally, most notably at the end, where he writes about his hotel room, not far from where Lin Zhao was imprisoned.
A moving account of astonishing human courage in the leering face of human cruelty.Pub Date: March 20, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5416-4423-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 7, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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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