by Monika Kørra ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 25, 2015
An intimate and honest memoir of survival after trauma.
A former Southern Methodist University track star’s account of how she survived a brutal rape that changed her life.
Going to the United States to study on a full scholarship was a dream come true for the Norwegian-born Kørra. In 2009, just as she was finishing her third semester at SMU, the young runner was kidnapped and raped by three men. The author vowed that her life would go on just as it had before the attack, but in the two years that followed, she found out just how difficult it would be to keep that promise to herself. Kørra describes in detail her struggles with the extreme fear and insomnia that plagued her in the aftermath and the AIDS anti-viral drugs she was forced to take to protect her brutalized body against possible infection. She sought therapy only to discover that having to retell the story of her rape was “overwhelming.” Journalists in Dallas hounded her for her story to the point that she and her roommates had to move to another location in secret, and friends in Norway she had known for years stayed away, unsure of how to treat her. Kørra’s athletic performance suffered for more than a year; so did a relationship she had, which eventually ended. But Kørra was also fortunate in that she had a strong support system that included her family as well as coaches, friends, and teammates in Dallas. When her rapists were captured not long after the attack, her support structure helped her through the wrenching court appearances that followed and did not conclude until 2011. Kørra speaks from a socially and educationally privileged position, which may somewhat limit her memoir’s appeal, but both the book and the foundation she later started to help rape survivors are clear expressions of a personal strength and integrity that are profoundly admirable.
An intimate and honest memoir of survival after trauma.Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8041-3962-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harmony
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 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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