An intelligent, revealing look at uncharmed lives in the Dominican Republic.
Two American middle school teachers offer an inside look at the Dominican Republic—one not revealed in travel brochures.
“Imagine being a cocoa picker but never getting to enjoy a chocolate bar,” teachers Santos and D’Amato write. “Picture yourself working for a posh hotel where staying for just one night costs more than two months’ salary.” In this behind-the-scenes account of their experiences leading students on “social justice” trips to the Dominican Republic, Santos and D’Amato present a travelogue of the developing Caribbean nation and its people, a starkly contrasting image of a country filled with natural beauty and plentiful resources as well as unseemly human struggles and extreme poverty. The book goes beyond the pristine beaches of a tourist guide to reveal life there as it really is. Difficult realities are exposed: the sex workers trade and the prevalence of HIV and other diseases; the scarcity of clean water and lack of access to public education; strong attitudes of discrimination against Haitians and women; and the prevalence of sweat shops in “free trade zones,” where earning a living wage is but a dream. With richly detailed descriptions, the writing is exceptionally crisp and likely to pull readers in as the students witness a voodoo ritual or spend a day working with garbage dump pickers. The authors’ method of teaching social studies through cultural immersion will undoubtedly help students become aware of, and engaged in, matters of social justice.
An intelligent, revealing look at uncharmed lives in the Dominican Republic.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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