A great-hearted book of tenderness and brutality.
The boldly intimate memoir of an English Gypsy's struggle to define himself and his sexuality outside the bounds of traditional Romany culture.
Walsh (Gypsy Boy, 2012) grew up in the rough-and-tumble world of Gypsies, where men "oozed testosterone and masculinity" and "drank, argued over women and produced sons." From the time he was a young boy, though, he knew he was different. His father wanted to transform him into a fighter worthy of the family name. However, "thrashing the stuffing" out of boys "just for the sake of some misguided sense of honour” made no sense at all. Tired of both his father's inability to accept him for what he was and of the secret sexual abuse he endured from his father's brother, Walsh ran away from home at 15. He went to live with his lover Caleb, who protected him from the Gypsy thugs his father hired to track them down. Walsh fled to Leeds and then Manchester, struggling to build a life among the "Gorgias." His relationship with Caleb did not survive, but other friends he made in the gay community helped him find his way. Against all odds, Walsh earned a college degree and also gained a coveted place at the Guildhall School of Drama in London. But he missed his family and worried for the safety of his youngest brother, who he feared would be molested by his unscrupulous uncle. Eventually, he exposed his father's brother for the predator he was. Neither Walsh's father nor his fighter-brother, however, could ever fully accept that homosexuality was part of their macho family heritage. Sadly aware that he would never be able to "go back to the family home again," Walsh nevertheless continued to love them from the new home he had made for himself outside the Gypsy community.
A great-hearted book of tenderness and brutality.Pub Date: March 12, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-250-02187-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
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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