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BIRTH OF A DREAM WEAVER

Name: BIRTH OF A DREAM WEAVER
Author: Ngugi wa Thiong'o
ISBN: 978-1-62097-240-3

A MEMOIR OF A WRITER'S AWAKENING

by Ngugi wa Thiong'o ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 4, 2016

A writer’s coming-of-age tale featuring an artistic mix of pride and humility.

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The celebrated African novelist, playwright, and activist, born in Kenya in 1938, revisits the early experiences that convinced him he was a writer.

Wa Thiong’o (English and Comparative Literature/Univ. of California, Irvine; In the House of the Interpreter, 2015, etc.) is a genial tour guide on this journey through his early years. One theme continually appears: his gratitude for his mother, who encouraged him early and often. The author proceeds in a gentle chronology as he takes us through his home life, schooling, and his discovery that he wanted to write—and that he had a natural talent for the craft. He wrote plays in school (winning a competition) and then began freelancing for local publications, including an extensive stint with a newspaper; he eventually resigned when he realized his passions lay in fiction and drama. Throughout, there are illustrations from his youth, including photos of people and clippings of his early publications and plays. Bubbling just below the surface—sometimes on the surface—is the fierce politics of the era, which featured the end of colonialism, the rise of brutal dictators, and countless ethnic clashes. As he acknowledges, the author was fortunate to avoid trouble early, but he also alludes to later years when he was incarcerated, experiences that are likely to appear in a subsequent memoir. Throughout, wa Thiong’o is careful to credit not just his mother, but some key teachers, friends, and significant supporters. Although the text communicates a clear pride in his accomplishments, the author notes repeatedly that his successes came not just from his talent and work ethic, but also from those who believed in him. He was able to study literature and literary theory at Makerere University in Kampala, Congo, and later at the University of Leeds. Through it all, “the desire to weave dreams remained aflame.”

A writer’s coming-of-age tale featuring an artistic mix of pride and humility.

Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-62097-240-3

Page Count: 256

Publisher: The New Press

Review Posted Online: July 23, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016

Categories:

- BOOK REVIEW
MINUTES OF GLORY
by Ngugi wa Thiong'o

- BOOK REVIEW
WRESTLING WITH THE DEVIL
by Ngugi wa Thiong'o

- BOOK REVIEW
IN THE HOUSE OF THE INTERPRETER
by Ngugi wa Thiong'o

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)