A tenderhearted and socially conscious memoir of dairy farming.
A fourth-generation dairy farmer reminisces about growing up in rural Wisconsin.
School psychologist Block recounts her childhood on a dairy farm in the Midwest in the mid-1900s. She chronicles a time when small farms, like her family’s, were at their height before a decline after World War II. With tender nostalgia and measured sentimentality, the author, one of five children, reflects that “everything revolved around school, church, and community. There was little contact with the outside world.” She offers vignettes about a wide range of topics, including the history of German migration to Wisconsin, and reveals a great reverence for her parents and other small farmers who made a living doing grueling but fulfilling work. Along the way, she provides vivid details of a bygone era that she claims was a simpler one. The resulting mosaic of everyday life on a farm is charming, but Block’s political take on small farms makes this book stand out from similar remembrances. In the chapter “Leaning Left,” she describes her parents as staunch Democrats who were inspired to organize small family farmers against corporatization that would ultimately destroy small dairy farming. Her father spent years organizing local farmers for the National Farmers Organization, helping them to negotiate a better price for their milk from large dairy companies. In one of the book’s most insightful reflections, she recalls her dad’s explanation of the plight of the American farmer: “Farmers are the last cowboys. They wouldn’t organize even if it was important to their livelihood to do so. Farmers enjoy their independence too much.” Today, the number of family farms is declining, and the steady drop in farmers’ incomes correlates with a spike in suicide rates among members of that group. Block exposes important social issues in this part of the text, although the majority of the book is an ode to happier times.
A tenderhearted and socially conscious memoir of dairy farming.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-66243-050-3
Page Count: 218
Publisher: Page Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood.
In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. While McCurdy didn’t emerge from her childhood unscathed, she’s managed to spin her harrowing experience into a sold-out stage act and achieve a form of catharsis that puts her mind, body, and acting career at peace.
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982185-82-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
© Copyright 2024 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.
bookshelf
