The lurid title belies the elegant poetry, honest humanity and complex culture exposed within.
Luecha’s memoir of astonishing brutality and miraculous salvation details her trials of being treated like chattel in 1960s Thailand.
The eldest child of a large, chaotic family, Luecha—Awe, as she’s known—"had been beaten since infancy." Raped for the first time when she was 4 years old, she had “the mentality of a Roman soldier” by the time she was 5. The daughter of a one-time nightclub singer and a high-ranking government official, she was surrounded in her formative years by a beloved great-grandfather, the “wise Sinsae of Nakornpathom”; a grandmother, who was more like a mother; younger siblings, mostly sisters; and a predatory stepfather, “Paw.” In order to escape Paw’s constant abuse, she ran off to Bangkok with dreams of school and a respectable job. Instead, like the frequently mentioned scent of garlic cooking, “karma” followed her in the form of repeated gang rapes and forced sexual servitude to a family of pimps, from whom she sustained “an almost daily harvest of punishment.” Her life among the young girls, who served up to seventy “Doors” (i.e., johns) a day—earning their “whalish cartoon” Boss a pretty penny—resembled a modern-day, highly sexual Dickensian universe. By 1972, when she was 14 and relatively free, Luecha estimates she was raped more than 9,000 times. Through her strength of character, modeled on her movie hero, Steve McQueen, and her passion for books, Luecha escaped her captors, returned home and put her siblings through school. Luecha’s astonishing gift for conjuring the smells, sights and sounds of her rich, turbulent homeland often captivates, despite the sometimes-unbearable pain and suffering she and others endured. Assured writing dotted with delightful similes and Thai expressions carries the reader through multiple detailed horrors with unexpected bursts of beauty and joy. Most surprisingly, Luecha retained her childlike sense of humor through the darkness. After a beating, Luecha writes, “My left eyeball disappeared for awhile [sic] behind a red curtain.” Her best friend and “model of cool,” Ying, simply told her she looked “like an angry squirrel.”
The lurid title belies the elegant poetry, honest humanity and complex culture exposed within.Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2013
ISBN: 978-1479168422
Page Count: 442
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
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