A keenly observed account of the human and political drama surrounding an abortion clinic. Freelance writer Korn spent a year at Lovejoy, a clinic in Portland, Ore., during which time he came to know intimately many of the workers there, as well as some of its vehement opponents, and they all defy easy stereotype. Head counselor Carye's empathic power is her greatest strength, and her weakness; she hates the term ``pro-choice'' because she feels that most of her patients do not have a choice. Allene, who sports sculpted nails and drives a black Jaguar, runs the clinic; she is a savvy businesswoman and fierce strategist. Outside the clinic is an equally compelling cast of characters—Andrew Burnett and his followers. Burnett, seemingly calm and rational, heads Advocates for Life, a Portland-based organization which puts out literature condoning the killing of abortion doctors. During the 12 months of Korn's coverage, Lovejoy weathers not only cascading threats and disruptive protests (one doctor wears a bulletproof vest), but harassment from angry boyfriends, the agony of countless indecisive girls, the sight of many people making wrenching choices, and persistent disputes among the staff. Worst of all, one surgical procedure goes terribly wrong, terrifying patients and staff alike. Korn's year-in-the-life format works well because events at Lovejoy are so consistently dramatic that his book needs no other narrative structure. The prose in the first chapters is a bit awkward and stilted, but as the pace picks up, it becomes more readable. Directly quoting the subjects more often would have given the narrative more resonance. Lovejoy is certain to humanize a battle that, though ceaselessly in the news, is waged too often in abstractions. Reading it is like watching the best kind of documentary film: It puts you on the scene, romanticizes no one, and doesn't preach.
Pub Date: Oct. 16, 1996
ISBN: 0-87113-659-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
A heartfelt if somewhat unsurprising view of old age by the former president. Carter (Living Faith, 1996, etc.) succinctly evaluates the evolution and current status of federal policies concerning the elderly (including a balanced appraisal of the difficulties facing the Social Security system). He also meditates, while drawing heavily on autobiographical anecdotes, on the possibilities for exploration and intellectual and spiritual growth in old age. There are few lightning bolts to dazzle in his prescriptions (cultivate family ties; pursue the restorative pleasures of hobbies and socially minded activities). Yet the warmth and frankness of Carter’s remarks prove disarming. Given its brevity, the work is more of a call to senior citizens to reconsider how best to live life than it is a guide to any of the details involved.
Pub Date: Oct. 26, 1998
ISBN: 0-345-42592-8
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1998
A Churchill-ian view of native history—Ward, that is, not Winston—its facts filtered through a dense screen of ideology.
Custer died for your sins. And so, this book would seem to suggest, did every other native victim of colonialism.
Inducing guilt in non-native readers would seem to be the guiding idea behind Dunbar-Ortiz’s (Emerita, Ethnic Studies/California State Univ., Hayward; Blood on the Border: A Memoir of the Contra War, 2005, etc.) survey, which is hardly a new strategy. Indeed, the author says little that hasn’t been said before, but she packs a trove of ideological assumptions into nearly every page. For one thing, while “Indian” isn’t bad, since “[i]ndigenous individuals and peoples in North America on the whole do not consider ‘Indian’ a slur,” “American” is due to the fact that it’s “blatantly imperialistic.” Just so, indigenous peoples were overwhelmed by a “colonialist settler-state” (the very language broadly applied to Israelis vis-à-vis the Palestinians today) and then “displaced to fragmented reservations and economically decimated”—after, that is, having been forced to live in “concentration camps.” Were he around today, Vine Deloria Jr., the always-indignant champion of bias-puncturing in defense of native history, would disavow such tidily packaged, ready-made, reflexive language. As it is, the readers who are likely to come to this book—undergraduates, mostly, in survey courses—probably won’t question Dunbar-Ortiz’s inaccurate assertion that the military phrase “in country” derives from the military phrase “Indian country” or her insistence that all Spanish people in the New World were “gold-obsessed.” Furthermore, most readers won’t likely know that some Ancestral Pueblo (for whom Dunbar-Ortiz uses the long-abandoned term “Anasazi”) sites show evidence of cannibalism and torture, which in turn points to the inconvenient fact that North America wasn’t entirely an Eden before the arrival of Europe.
A Churchill-ian view of native history—Ward, that is, not Winston—its facts filtered through a dense screen of ideology.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8070-0040-3
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2014
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