A powerful and topical examination of tragedy.
A collection of poetry that explores police brutality and racism toward members of black communities in America.
Leak (Faith of our Founders, Ed., 2015) offers her first compilation of original poems. In three sections, she emotionally addresses the history and current state of black people in the United States. The first deals directly with the “#SayHerName” movement, which seeks to increase awareness of the stories of black, female victims of police brutality. Each poem re-creates and comments on a moment when a black woman was gunned down by the police, as in “They Be Comin,’ ” an early poem about Kendra James, who was killed by police in 2003: “They be comin’ single siren / They be comin’ with lights of blue / .… / They be comin’ to put a gun to your head.” This effectively sets the tone of urgency that runs throughout the collection. The second section, titled “#TheBrothers,” addresses black, male victims. In “Chillin,’ ” about 16-year-old Traveres McGill, who was shot dead by police in 2005, she writes, “Just chillin’ with my boys / …. / Bullets flying, shot in the back, no one expected / the night to end like this / Just chillin’ with my boys.” One of the most powerful pieces, “Just Stand,” addresses the Trayvon Martin murder: “From Douglass, Dubois, Washington, and even / to the dream of King, / We have stood marching arm in arm, crying for / justice not realizing what it would mean.” The third and final section, “Just Us,” traces the history of black communities, reaching back to slavery: “Men haggling over prices of humans / ….No country, no home, no family.” Over the course of this collection, Leak expertly balances the facts of her subjects’ deaths with the poetic form, which she ably uses to express larger feelings of desperation and exasperation. Community and togetherness is a major motif, and she addresses how groups can provide hope in the midst of historical atrocities, as well as how they’ve been ripped apart by more recent events.
A powerful and topical examination of tragedy.Pub Date: Nov. 20, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-984518-57-6
Page Count: 186
Publisher: XlibrisUS
Review Posted Online: May 28, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A dauntless, moving account of a kidnapping and the horrors that followed.
Enduring the unthinkable.
This memoir—the first by an Israeli taken captive by Hamas on October 7, 2023—chronicles the 491 days the author was held in Gaza. Confined to tunnels beneath war-ravaged streets, Sharabi was beaten, humiliated, and underfed. When he was finally released in February, he learned that Hamas had murdered his wife and two daughters. In the face of scarcely imaginable loss, Sharabi has crafted a potent record of his will to survive. The author’s ordeal began when Hamas fighters dragged him from his home, in a kibbutz near Gaza. Alongside others, he was held for months at a time in filthy subterranean spaces. He catalogs sensory assaults with novelistic specificity. Iron shackles grip his ankles. Broken toilets produce an “unbearable stink,” and “tiny white worms” swarm his toothbrush. He gets one meal a day, his “belly caving inward.” Desperate for more food, he stages a fainting episode, using a shaving razor to “slice a deep gash into my eyebrow.” Captors share their sweets while celebrating an Iranian missile attack on Israel. He and other hostages sneak fleeting pleasures, finding and downing an orange soda before a guard can seize it. Several times, Sharabi—51 when he was kidnapped—gives bracing pep talks to younger compatriots. The captives learn to control what they can, trading family stories and “lift[ing] water bottles like dumbbells.” Remarkably, there’s some levity. He and fellow hostages nickname one Hamas guard “the Triangle” because he’s shaped like a SpongeBob SquarePants character. The book’s closing scenes, in which Sharabi tries to console other hostages’ families while learning the worst about his own, are heartbreaking. His captors “are still human beings,” writes Sharabi, bravely modeling the forbearance that our leaders often lack.
A dauntless, moving account of a kidnapping and the horrors that followed.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780063489790
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Harper Influence/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
