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MY DAUGHTER, MY TEACHER

Name: MY DAUGHTER, MY TEACHER
Author: Martha Ziegler
ISBN: 978-1-4502-2916-6

MARY ANN, AUTISTIC IN ENGLISH AND SPANISH

by Martha Ziegler ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 10, 2010

Emotional storytelling and an inadequate overview of America’s response to autism now and then makes for a quick, linear...

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Part sentimental diary, part how-to study guide, Ziegler’s memoir traces a mother’s personal and political struggle in raising an autistic child.

After a brief summary of the Ziegler family tree and the author’s foray into motherhood, Ziegler gives the straightforward chronology of her daughter Mary Ann’s life before and after the young girl’s diagnosis with autism. Ziegler forgoes substantive discourse on the tribulations of raising an autistic child within the confines of the uninformed public sphere and instead focuses on Mary Ann’s emotional coming-of-age narrative. This heartfelt storytelling would be more effective without constant allusion to a greater goal—systemic change at the local and national levels of autistic care. Following Mary Ann through the public education system of ’70s America, Ziegler paints a portrait of an institution replete with troubled students yet entirely without the funding and understanding necessary to meet their needs. Mary Ann eventually moves from Ziegler’s house to a group home for disabled adults, enters the workforce and earns the title “Employee of the Year.” She also suffers abuse from an aide and then successfully testifies against him in court. Often, Ziegler likens her daughter’s interpretation of the world around her to that of poets and philosophers, but this renders Mary Ann an abstraction and removes her from the larger conversation regarding autism in America. Though the text discusses a handful of national conferences, the overturning of antiquated statutes and a guide to the autistic spectrum, crucial information is both sporadic and delayed. Ziegler evokes a warm response in readers toward Mary Ann, but not toward the overall cause. By the time the author explains—through bullet points—how and why we should take action in the battle to understand and help those in the autistic spectrum, we are lost in a haze of anecdotes and acronyms.

Emotional storytelling and an inadequate overview of America’s response to autism now and then makes for a quick, linear read without a significant payoff.

Pub Date: May 10, 2010

ISBN: 978-1-4502-2916-6

Page Count: 138

Publisher: iUniverse

Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2010

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)