by Nicole Chung ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 4, 2023
As Chung seeks a way to grieve without self-punishment, this open-hearted, unflinching account will be a boon to others.
An adopted daughter finds herself robbed of the chance to give back to beloved parents.
Chung grew up in rural Oregon, the Korean daughter of White parents and one of the only Asians in her area, a situation she described in her poignant debut memoir, All You Can Ever Know. Her urge to confront troubling truths continues to drive her second book, which examines and expiates the vexing circumstances of her parents' deaths. After living "paycheck to paycheck" throughout her youth, her parents were out of work and without health insurance when her father's sudden, serious illness began. Death is no great equalizer, as the author soon learned: "Sickness and grief throw wealthy and poor families alike into upheaval, but they do not transcend the gulfs between us, as some claim—if anything, they often magnify them." Her father's death felt like "a kind of negligent homicide, facilitated and sped by the state’s failure to fulfill its most basic responsibilities to him and others like him." His passing came just before a change in Chung's own finances, as the manuscript of the memoir her father never finished reading was bought and published. Briefly, things looked brighter, as her bereaved mother planned a trip to Greece with friends from her church. Then, in quick succession, she was diagnosed with cancer, and Covid-19 arrived. Again, Chung's hands were tied, and she faced the cruel situation so many did during lockdown, unable to be present with dying relatives. Memoirs such as this one provide an important record of the emotional cost of the pandemic. Read in tandem with the author's first book, it underlines the strength of her connection to both her adoptive parents and the birth-family relatives she found.
As Chung seeks a way to grieve without self-punishment, this open-hearted, unflinching account will be a boon to others.Pub Date: April 4, 2023
ISBN: 9780063031616
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
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edited by Shannon Gibney & Nicole Chung
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edited by Nicole Chung & Mensah Demary
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PERSPECTIVES
by Jennette McCurdy ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 9, 2022
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
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New York Times Bestseller
IndieBound Bestseller
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
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
by Ta-Nehisi Coates ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 8, 2015
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
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21
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Kirkus Reviews'
Best Books Of 2015
Kirkus Prize
winner
New York Times Bestseller
IndieBound Bestseller
National Book Award Winner
Pulitzer Prize Finalist
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
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by Ta-Nehisi Coates ; illustrated by Jackie Aher
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SEEN & HEARD
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