To borrow one of the author’s overused transitions, “to make a long story short,” stick with the master’s music and steer...
The venerated Cuban jazz saxophonist produces a rambling rendition of his life that is far from pitch-perfect.
D’Rivera begins with Webster’s definition of “book,” but he would have fared better to find the meaning of “memoir.” D’Rivera’s story reads like a scrapbook, replete with travelogue accounts of his concerts abroad, random black-and-white photos (one of him and Dizzy Gillespie in a sauna in Helsinki in the middle of a chapter about Madrid) and caricature sketches (by him, by his mother, by his friends) of Fidel Castro, of himself, of the Chinese-American cellist Yo-Yo Ma. At times it appears that since D’Rivera’s 1980 defection from Cuba (to New York via Madrid), this self-proclaimed “raging anti-Communist” has made a side career of collecting and writing snarky op-ed pieces about anyone—from actor Danny Glover to bass player Charlie Haden—who dares to visit Cuba and not denounce Castro. While D’Rivera’s anger does have a basis—he was involved in a nine-year legal battle to bring his wife and son over from Cuba and, while still on the island, his music was sometimes censored—his vitriolic classification of those who don’t share his views, political or otherwise, as “idiots” and “assholes,” is hard to take. Tiresome too are D’Rivera’s machista descriptions of women (he likes Venezuelans because they are good cooks and all the ugly ones have probably been sent to Mongolia), his sexual puns and his surplus of scatological humor. Toward the end, D’Rivera tells us that Cubans are, by nature, contradictory characters, a point already proven by his sudden switches between resentment and reverence in his extended acknowledgment-like passages to his friends and in their reprinted testimonial letters touting D’Rivera’s talent.
To borrow one of the author’s overused transitions, “to make a long story short,” stick with the master’s music and steer clear of this book.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2005
ISBN: 0-8101-2218-9
Page Count: 365
Publisher: Northwestern Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2005
An engrossing memoir as well as a lively treatise on what extraordinary grace under extraordinary pressure looks like.
The former first lady opens up about her early life, her journey to the White House, and the eight history-making years that followed.
It’s not surprising that Obama grew up a rambunctious kid with a stubborn streak and an “I’ll show you” attitude. After all, it takes a special kind of moxie to survive being the first African-American FLOTUS—and not only survive, but thrive. For eight years, we witnessed the adversity the first family had to face, and now we get to read what it was really like growing up in a working-class family on Chicago’s South Side and ending up at the world’s most famous address. As the author amply shows, her can-do attitude was daunted at times by racism, leaving her wondering if she was good enough. Nevertheless, she persisted, graduating from Chicago’s first magnet high school, Princeton, and Harvard Law School, and pursuing careers in law and the nonprofit world. With her characteristic candor and dry wit, she recounts the story of her fateful meeting with her future husband. Once they were officially a couple, her feelings for him turned into a “toppling blast of lust, gratitude, fulfillment, wonder.” But for someone with a “natural resistance to chaos,” being the wife of an ambitious politician was no small feat, and becoming a mother along the way added another layer of complexity. Throw a presidential campaign into the mix, and even the most assured woman could begin to crack under the pressure. Later, adjusting to life in the White House was a formidable challenge for the self-described “control freak”—not to mention the difficulty of sparing their daughters the ugly side of politics and preserving their privacy as much as possible. Through it all, Obama remained determined to serve with grace and help others through initiatives like the White House garden and her campaign to fight childhood obesity. And even though she deems herself “not a political person,” she shares frank thoughts about the 2016 election.
An engrossing memoir as well as a lively treatise on what extraordinary grace under extraordinary pressure looks like.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6313-8
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A book that will challenge readers as much as the author has challenged herself.
A fiercely provocative and intellectually audacious memoir that focuses on motherhood, love and gender fluidity.
Nelson (Critical Studies/CalArts; The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning, 2012, etc.) is all over the map in a memoir that illuminates Barthes and celebrates anal eroticism (charging that some who have written about it hide behind metaphor, whereas she’s plain from the first paragraph that she’s more interested in the real deal). This is a book about transitioning, transgendering, transcending and any other trans- the author wants to connect. But it’s also a love story, chronicling the relationship between the author and her lover, the artist Harry Dodge, who was born a female (or at least had a female name) but has more recently passed for male, particularly with the testosterone treatments that initially concerned the author before she realized her selfishness. The relationship generally requires “pronoun avoidance.” This created a problem in 2008, when the New York Times published a piece on Dodge’s art but insisted that the artist “couldn’t appear on their pages unless you chose Mr. or Ms….You chose Ms., ‘to take one for the team.’ ” Nelson was also undergoing body changes, through a pregnancy she had desired since the relationship flourished. She recounts 2011 as “the summer of our changing bodies.” She elaborates: “On the surface it may have seemed as though your body was becoming more and more ‘male,’ mine more and more ‘female.’ But that’s not how it felt on the inside.” The author turns the whole process and concept of motherhood inside out, exploring every possible perspective, blurring the distinctions among the political, philosophical, aesthetic and personal, wondering if her writing is violating the privacy of her son-to-be as well as her lover. Ultimately, Harry speaks within these pages, as the death of Dodge’s mother and the birth of their son bring the book to its richly rewarding climax.
A book that will challenge readers as much as the author has challenged herself.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-55597-707-8
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Graywolf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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