A rigorously researched tale about a union leader that’s brimming with historical insights and thrilling drama.
A historical novel focuses on a legendary union organizer and anarchist during the 20th century.
Angela Bambace is born in Brazil in 1898 and spends the first year of her life in Calabria, though Harlem is the initial place she calls home. Not yet a teenager, she witnesses the gruesome carnage at a garment factory that burns down to the ground on aptly named Misery Lane, a catastrophe that claims the lives of more than 140 workers, mostly immigrants and women. Nevertheless, Bambace follows her mother’s example out of economic necessity and becomes a seamstress, burdened by long hours and meager compensation. But she begins organizing for the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union and participates in the historically significant strikes of 1919, watershed events in the transformation of labor dissatisfaction into a political movement, astutely portrayed by Lamphier (Iron Widow, 2019). Bambace is compelled to put her aspirations on hold when her father forces her into an arranged marriage with Romolo Camponeschi, an abusive husband with whom she bears two children. But she eventually leaves him—he sues her for divorce and full custody of the children—and falls in love with Luigi Quintiliano, a lawyer who worked for the defense of Sacco and Vanzetti. Bambace eventually moves to Baltimore to organize for the ILGWU, a temporary assignment that grows into a permanent, high-ranking post. This novel is part of the Mentoris Project, which highlights notable Italians and Italian Americans. In these pages, the author deftly captures not only the social unrest of the time and the ghastly conditions under which laborers were compelled to work, but also the plights of female employees and Italians, both often cruelly dismissed by their counterparts. Lamphier shows Bambace tirelessly fighting for the rights of all workers, though her name is tarnished by her ideological association with anarchists, an affinity she proudly defends: “I am an anarchist because I believe people, all people, have the right to live with dignity, to work for a living wage, and to make real choices about their lives.” This is a historically edifying book, skillfully depicting both the tumultuous times and Bambace’s considerable contributions.
A rigorously researched tale about a union leader that’s brimming with historical insights and thrilling drama.Pub Date: July 31, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-947431-24-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Barbera Foundation, Inc.
Review Posted Online: Aug. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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