A well-structured memoir told in brief, punchy vignettes alternating between past and present.
A spirited pursuit of her mother’s roots takes one African-American woman from Jamaica to Harlem to China.
A former NBC executive who is now CEO of a family investment group based in Chicago, Madison (who lives in Los Angeles) proves a formidable, dogged detective in tracing the complicated ramifications of her Chinese grandfather’s work in Jamaica and return to China in the early 1930s. A teenager when he arrived in Jamaica in 1905, Samuel Lowe came from the Hakka minority ethnic group noted for its entrepreneurial drive; soon, he set up one thriving “Chiney shop” after another. He developed romantic attachments with the local ladies; in liaisons not unusual in Jamaica at the time, he fathered several children by different women. The first of these “outside children” was the author’s mother, Nell Vera Lowe, whose distinctive Chinese look would cast her as a kind of pariah in her community. In time, Lowe married a family-designated Chinese bride sent from home, who bore him several more children. Thus, when Lowe returned with his wife to China during the business-stifling Depression, he left Nell behind, among other children, who scarcely knew him or each other. Badly treated by her mother, who resented her Chinese looks, Nell eventually immigrated to New York and became a citizen, raising her children largely on her own when her Jamaican husband proved troublesome and unfaithful. Madison traces this tale of loss through her mother’s story: Without education, Nell was doomed to a hard life of work as a seamstress, and she endured welfare and marginalization with a ferocious protectiveness toward her children. As the author pursues Lowe’s family in China, arranging visits and sifting through minute ancestral details, she proves a valiant avenger of her mother’s difficult past.
A well-structured memoir told in brief, punchy vignettes alternating between past and present.Pub Date: April 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-0062331632
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2015
While the author may attempt to mirror this ideal, the result is less than satisfying and more than a little irritating.
A disjointed debut memoir about how competitive swimming shaped the personal and artistic sensibilities of a respected illustrator.
Through a series of vignettes, paintings and photographs that often have no sequential relationship to each other, Shapton (The Native Trees of Canada, 2010, etc.) depicts her intense relationship to all aspects of swimming: pools, water, races and even bathing suits. The author trained competitively throughout her adolescence, yet however much she loved racing, “the idea of fastest, of number one, of the Olympics, didn’t motivate me.” In 1988 and again in 1992, she qualified for the Olympic trials but never went further. Soon afterward, Shapton gave up competition, but she never quite ended her relationship to swimming. Almost 20 years later, she writes, “I dream about swimming at least three nights a week.” Her recollections are equally saturated with stories that somehow involve the act of swimming. When she speaks of her family, it is less in terms of who they are as individuals and more in context of how they were involved in her life as a competitive swimmer. When she describes her adult life—which she often reveals in disconnected fragments—it is in ways that sometimes seem totally random. If she remembers the day before her wedding, for example, it is because she couldn't find a bathing suit to wear in her hotel pool. Her watery obsession also defines her view of her chosen profession, art. At one point, Shapton recalls a documentary about Olympian Michael Phelps and draws the parallel that art, like great athleticism, is as “serene in aspect” as it is “incomprehensible.”
While the author may attempt to mirror this ideal, the result is less than satisfying and more than a little irritating.Pub Date: July 5, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-399-15817-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Blue Rider Press
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
For the author’s fans.
A Fox News journalist and talk show host sets out to prove that she is not “an empty St. John suit in five-inch stiletto heels.”
The child of devout Christians, Minnesota native Carlson’s first love was music. She began playing violin at age 6 and quickly revealed that she was not only a prodigy, but also a little girl who thrived on pleasing audiences. Working with top teachers, she developed her art over the years. But by 16, Carlson began “chafing at [the] rigid, structured life” of a concert violinist–in-training and temporarily put music aside. At the urging of her mother, the high achiever set her sights on winning the Miss T.E.E.N. pageant, where she was first runner-up. College life at Stanford became yet another quest for perfection that led Carlson to admit it was “not attainable” after she earned a C in one class. At the end of her junior year and again at the urging of her mother, Carlson entered the 1989 Miss America pageant, which she would go on to win thanks to a brilliant violin performance. Dubbed the “smart Miss America,” Carlson struggled with pageant stereotypes as well as public perceptions of who she was. Being in the media spotlight every day during her reign, however, also helped her decide on a career in broadcast journalism. Yet success did not come easily. Sexual harassment dogged her, and many expressed skepticism about her abilities due to her pageant past. Even after she rose to national prominence, first as a CBS news broadcaster and then as a Fox talk show host, Carlson continued—and continues—to be labeled as “dumb or a bimbo.” Her history clearly demonstrates that she is neither. However, Carlson’s overly earnest tone, combined with her desire to show her Minnesota “niceness…in action,” as well as the existence of “abundant brain cells,” dampens the book’s impact.
For the author’s fans.Pub Date: June 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-525-42745-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
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