by Pat Henman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 14, 2021
An insightful and moving account of survival and recovery.
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A personal, candid, and powerful memoir about surviving trauma and living with disability.
Henman had a busy life as a singer, actor, concert and theater director, and mother of three teenagers, which was upended suddenly on a sunny summer day on June 9, 2013. She and her 19-year-old daughter, Maia, were driving home to Nelson, British Columbia, from a weekend visit with relatives in Calgary, Alberta, where Maia had just completed her first year of university, when a drunk driver crashed into them head-on. Both women suffered horrific injuries, multiple surgeries, long hospitalizations, PTSD, chronic pain, and disabilities that necessitated the use of wheelchairs. Over the next three years, they also contended with complicated, slow criminal and civil legal proceedings against the driver in a system that, as Henman depicts it, often makes victims feel powerless. The author tells her story in straightforward, matter-of-fact language and with great honesty, as when she tells of weeping tears of joy the first time she’s able to shower, and even some humor, as when she calls recurrent abscesses “little bastards.” She’s also thoughtful and empathetic about her struggles to come to terms with the crash and its consequences. The loss of music in her life is particularly poignant; she was unable to listen to it for the first year, due to brain injury, and damage to her vocal cords altered her voice. Her account of living with an ileostomy offers a new perspective on disability, and she argues persuasively that driving under the influence should be treated as a violent crime. The first two-thirds of the narrative focus mainly on her recovery process, highlighting the support of the author’s family and community, while the latter portion deals with legal aspects in more detail and the help she received from Mothers Against Drunk Driving Canada, for which she’s an active volunteer. An epilogue describes Henman’s eventual return to creative work, her ongoing advocacy for crime victims, and Maia’s graduation, budding career, and advocacy for people living with chronic pain.
An insightful and moving account of survival and recovery.Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-77-386049-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Caitlin Press
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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
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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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Kirkus Reviews'
Best Books Of 2015
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New York Times Bestseller
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Pulitzer Prize Finalist
National Book Award Winner
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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