A useful reminder of the importance of education in slowing the spread of an epidemic.
Clark, a former AIDS educator for the United Nations who is now a creative writer and teacher, recounts pursuing her careers while living with HIV.
The author tells her story of coming to grips with being HIV-positive and then devoting herself to UN Cares, the program she helped launch in 2008. In the years she spent working for the U.N., she devoted her time to educating people about HIV and how to prevent its spread in workshops worldwide, and much of her job consisted of pushing back against denial and misinformation. Along the way, she discovered the power of sharing her story to demonstrate that people living with HIV aren’t as “different” as some people think. A revelation that some readers may find surprising is that she opposes mandatory HIV testing: “It’s our job to educate [staff members, soldiers, or civilians] so they will go for testing of their own volition,” she told a U.N. colleague. “It is not our place to force them to. We simply cannot do that. It would be unethical.” Her story includes an account of her brief marriage to a man who initially hid his mental health problems. She also demonstrates the importance of care for organizational staff, including self-care, as she needed to seek treatment for worsening effects of the virus. The book includes a postscript about when she came down with Covid-19, early in the pandemic. Clark offers an important personal account over the course of this remembrance. However, it’s not without its limitations. Although she notes her privilege as a straight White woman, she doesn’t dig deeply enough into people’s incorrect assumptions about who can and can’t become HIV-positive. Also, her discussion of her brief marriage and foster motherhood sidetracks the narrative. Finally, the book’s subtitle suggests that Covid-19 is a bigger part of the memoir than it ultimately is. Still, this book is vital to understanding how willful ignorance by those in charge assisted the spread of AIDS.
A useful reminder of the importance of education in slowing the spread of an epidemic.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2021
ISBN: 9781950668113
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Northampton House Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood.
In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. While McCurdy didn’t emerge from her childhood unscathed, she’s managed to spin her harrowing experience into a sold-out stage act and achieve a form of catharsis that puts her mind, body, and acting career at peace.
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982185-82-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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