An unusual take on contemporary Christianity grounded in a remarkable life story and told with exceptional prose.
A memoir offers the experiences of a progressive minister and her radical ideas to reshape Christianity.
Pearce’s (No One in I Land, 2015) latest work is not just a retelling of her life, but also an exploration of the origins of the concepts that have molded her efforts as a pastor and humanitarian. As a child attending a Presbyterian church in Denver, the author showed remarkable conviction from an early age. But it was after studying abroad in Germany and then working with the Peace Corps in Ecuador that she began to truly see the world—and herself— differently. Upon her return, Pearce became uneasy with a typical middle-class lifestyle, noticed incredible pride within contemporary churches, and felt a strong call to become engaged politically. These thoughts eventually led her to a seminary in San Francisco, where she met her lifelong friend Tricia and opened her eyes to sexism and imperialism. The author then moved to Philadelphia and became the pastor of Tabernacle United Church, where she discovered a strong, like-minded community. But over the years, she grew more experimental and courageous in both her actions and thoughts; eventually she even served prison time for nonviolent civil disobedience and began to examine the ideas of Eastern and Wiccan religions to totally redesign her view of Jesus. “When we focus our spiritual journey on Jesus himself…we fail to see what he was showing us about our own nature,” the author writes, deftly elaborating her thesis that the Christian church’s fixation on Jesus actually works against his most important teachings. It’s a progressive stance and an idea that could be difficult for more traditional readers to embrace, especially with her tendency to throw in New Age–style lingo about “Ultimate Reality” and “the quantum void.” But the narration of her life and reflections moves with swift efficiency, and her passionate voice helps sell even the strangest of notions: Her eloquent passages on life in South America and her own experiences with sexism are particularly moving and convincing. By the time she reaches her most unconventional arguments, it will be hard for readers not to agree.
An unusual take on contemporary Christianity grounded in a remarkable life story and told with exceptional prose.Pub Date: July 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63152-359-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
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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