Illuminating and useful.
A distinguished business diversity expert advises women of color on how to move up the corporate ladder.
In this memoir and guidebook, Gadsden-Williams interweaves the story of her life as a black female executive with research statistics and savvy career tips for minority women also seeking to occupy the “C-Suite.” The author credits much of her success to parents who taught her the importance of “stick-to-itiveness”—in particular, her father, who managed to thrive in corporate management despite discrimination. In her own professional life, the author observed that although black women worked twice as hard to advance, they faced “concrete ceiling[s]” that left them unable to get to the next level. The way Gadsden-Williams managed to get ahead was to become as visible as possible in every organization where she worked. Along a path that took her from product development and marketing to human resources, she realized that her true professional calling was “fighting for the underdog” as a corporate diversity manager. The author’s insight helped her understand that a big part of success had to do with defining “passion and purpose.” Networking both inside and outside the companies where she worked, finding mentors to advise her and sponsors willing to invest in her career advancement, was also crucial. While she counsels strategic behaviors and decision-making throughout, Gadsden-Williams is also very clear that the notion that women can have it all is a “boldface lie.” Drawing on her own experiences living with lupus, she further reminds readers that self-care is essential. Because black women work twice as hard, they suffer “twice as much from certain illnesses than other groups.” Always candid about the realities of corporate life, the author offers sound advice for minority women seeking advancement, recognition, and meaningful lives.
Illuminating and useful.Pub Date: May 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-61775-624-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Open Lens/Akashic
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 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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