If Detroit is grim and fraught, it is in its tensions that Clemens finds the material to make his memoir thrum like his...
A deep-running portrait of growing up in Detroit during the 1970s and 80s.
Born in 1973, Clemens was already an anachronism in his youth: white, from a working class family and living in a city that wasn’t— where Manifest Destiny ran in reverse, where even Motown left Motown. Why his family continued to abide south of Eight Mile Road is not clearly understood by Clemens, just as many things regarding the place are not understood, but to Clemens’ everlasting credit, he wants to learn. He delves into literature, for one, from James Baldwin to Ralph Ellison, James Joyce to William Faulkner. They profoundly influence his sense of self, yet they won’t nearly have the impact of his father: a plain-speaking man given to worshipping at the altar of the internal combustion engine, one who impresses on his son the value of integrity, to get things right, meet your responsibilities daily, apply common sense (including starting up the dragster at 3 a.m.—all part of his charm). His mother, too, will be there to polish a lens through which Clemens can see himself clearly, for he is a man now warring with himself: “a racist, perhaps, but probably not one full of shit.” Not at all full of shit, and not a racist either; Clemens doesn’t traffick in received opinions. If he perceives Detroit as hopeless, at least Clemens doesn’t tut-tut from afar; crime, corruption, the pure lack of common sense—the city has scoured him at first hand. He is not impressed enough with humanity in general to elevate any race, nor will he be abased by one. At one point, as Clemens pursues an advanced degree in literature, he finds himself increasingly drawn to expression over content, after years of striving to learn and understand. At least he doesn’t make that mistake here.
If Detroit is grim and fraught, it is in its tensions that Clemens finds the material to make his memoir thrum like his father’s dragster.Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2005
ISBN: 0-385-51140-X
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
