A remembrance with a powerful message about strength and recovery, hampered by awkward execution.
A memoir of healing from trauma and addiction from a well-known West Coast political figure.
In 2017, Davis, then the wife of former California attorney general and treasurer Bill Lockyer, was arrested on suspicion of domestic abuse; she eventually was ordered by a judge to attend 180 days of mandatory Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. She was a famous figure in local politics; she’d resigned from the Alameda County Board of Supervisors in 2012, after she revealed her struggles with addiction to alcohol and narcotics, so the arrest attracted media interest. Here, she takes to pen and paper to reclaim her story in her own words. Davis, the daughter of a renowned civil rights attorney, earned a number of accolades and held multiple offices, including president of the Santa Ana Unified School District Board of Trustees, before marrying Lockyer. Davis’ struggles with addiction became fodder for scandal-hungry local news outlets, she says, and she fell victim to media shaming. With admirable candor, she shares a story of resilience, delving into childhood and adult traumas, including a nearly fatal car accident and difficulties involving a stalker, and tells how she worked to overcome intense feelings of “shame, fear, and resentment.” Davis is an open and unwavering narrator who presents readers with explicit descriptions of sexual assault, eating disorders, suicidal ideation, and substance abuse. The work touches on issues of privacy, motherhood, injustice, and mental health, including important criticisms of how addiction is criminalized and misunderstood. However, with such a wide range of topics, the narrative can sometimes feel unfocused. It’s written in the form of letters to her sons, which is a wonderfully evocative choice, but the missives become sidetracked in winding asides. Diary entries, notes, and letters-within-letters are scattered throughout most chapters, and it can feel as if the author had momentarily forgotten that the book is intended to address her children directly. Also, in one of the memoir’s most emotionally charged moments, she includes what appear to be unattributed lyrics from a Disney-film song(“Know Who You Are” from 2016’s Moana).
A remembrance with a powerful message about strength and recovery, hampered by awkward execution.Pub Date: Dec. 8, 2021
ISBN: 978-1087994413
Page Count: 354
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Nov. 29, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A generous, steaming stew of a book loaded with personality and originality and sprinkled with the fiery chili of rage.
A poet’s memoir about her working-class childhood, writing career, family, and Asian American identity.
Despite the fact that Wong’s father gambled away the family's Chinese restaurant in New Jersey when she was still quite young, the feeling of being a "restaurant baby" is central to this book. "I am that person who thinks that the compost bin is beautiful, in all its swirls of color (jade mold, chocolate slime—why is no one hiring me to name nail polish?), surprising texture, and piquant death,” she writes. After her father lost the restaurant and left the family, her mother became a postal worker, sorting mail overnight into and through the pandemic. If there is a single topic that unifies the book, it's her mother. A series of passages labeled “wongmom.com” imagines that her mother's wisdom might be available online, including things like her take on an "ancient Chinese saying”—“If you can’t crawl, swim. If you can’t swim, then take the bus.” Wong's sharp sense of humor is fueled by a healthy dose of righteous anger, and her lyric energy bursts from almost every sentence. In the chapter titled "Bad Bildungsroman With Table Tennis,” she writes, "Part of being a teenager is the desire to destroy something. To break something apart so fully, you can see its pulled seams, its tangled organs. At 13, I felt this feeling churn within me, this rage, this pimple-popping lusciousness of rudeness, this gleaming desire for sudden destruction." She writes candidly about her shoplifting phase, her misery at the Iowa Writer's Workshop, and her disgust for bigotry and cultural appropriation. A good portion of the book focuses on finding her confidence as an Asian American poet, including the glorious moment when she was recognized with a big grant and a museum show. For this profoundly unsqueamish writer, poetry is "interior slime spicy along our tongues" and "chicken grease congealing behind my ear."
A generous, steaming stew of a book loaded with personality and originality and sprinkled with the fiery chili of rage.Pub Date: May 16, 2023
ISBN: 9781953534675
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Tin House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
A solid work of investigation that, while treading well-covered ground, offers plenty of surprises.
An account of the last gasps of the Trump administration, completing a trilogy begun with Fear (2018) and Rage (2020).
One of Woodward and fellow Washington Post reporter Costa’s most memorable revelations comes right away: Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, calling his counterpart in Beijing to assure him that even after Jan. 6 and what Milley saw as an unmistakable attempt at a coup d’état, he would keep Trump from picking a war with China. This depiction has earned much attention on the talking-heads news channels, but more significant is its follow-up: Milley did so because he was concerned that Trump “might still be looking for what Milley called a ‘Reichstag moment.’ ” Milley emerges as a stalwart protector of the Constitution who constantly courted Trump’s ire and yet somehow survived without being fired. No less concerned about Trump’s erratic behavior was Paul Ryan, the former Speaker of the House, who studied the psychiatric literature for a big takeaway: “Do not humiliate Trump in public. Humiliating a narcissist risked real danger, a frantic lashing out if he felt threatened or criticized.” Losing the 2020 election was one such humiliation, and Woodward and Costa closely track the trajectory of Trump’s reaction, from depression to howling rage to the stubborn belief that the election was rigged. There are a few other modest revelations in the book, including the fact that Trump loyalist William Barr warned him that the electorate didn’t like him. “They just think you’re a fucking asshole,” Barr told his boss. That was true enough, and the civil war that the authors recount among various offices in the White House and government reveals that Trump’s people were only ever tentatively his. All the same, the authors note, having drawn on scores of “deep background” interviews, Trump still has his base, still intends vengeance by way of a comeback, and still constitutes the peril of their title.
A solid work of investigation that, while treading well-covered ground, offers plenty of surprises.Pub Date: Sept. 21, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-982182-91-5
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2021
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