A stunning story about everyday people combating a brutal history.
A riveting true story of courage and friendship in Jim Crow Mississippi.
With the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act upon us, here’s a story sure to attract attention—deservedly so. It tells the tale of an unlikely friendship between a white woman and a black woman in Mississippi in the 1950s. The story opens with the unjustified arrest of Ella Gaston and her husband, who are pulled over while driving and arrested in front of their children for no other reason than their skin color. Ella is eventually found guilty of intimidating an officer, but the verdict is remarkably overruled by the all-white Mississippi Supreme Court. To ensure that Ella’s future is problem free, her employer and all-around spitfire, Jewell McMahan, takes matters into her own hands; together, they concoct various plans to protect Ella from a retrial. The two stand strong against higher-ranking officials—not to mention an entire culture—dead set on keeping Ella and her race down. Johnson, a journalist, tells the story quite eloquently. She is particularly adept at pacing, which makes for an exciting read. Most impressively, Johnson weaves history into the narrative. Readers learn about Ella’s uneducated, almost hopeless past through an extended piece on the effects of the Civil War: “For its white citizenry, who had lived through the degradation of defeat without much bloodshed in their own backyards, the bitter determination to maintain the ‘Southern Way of Life’ remained a motivating cause for over a hundred years.” But Johnson doesn’t merely rely on generalization; readers also learn about various different pockets of the South and how they could determine one’s outlook. While raised in Kentucky, for instance, Jewell had had very little contact as a child and young adult with African-Americans; consequently, she had little patience with the prejudice she encountered as she aged and moved away from home. Her character is especially vivid, full of spunk and verve. In a way, she outshines Ella, who could use a bit more personality. Overall, though, the story is a remarkable one about friendship, racism and overcoming the odds.
A stunning story about everyday people combating a brutal history.Pub Date: May 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1491730447
Page Count: 256
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: June 23, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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