An uplifting but unfocused remembrance and testimonial.
A devoutly Christian Nigerian man’s memoir of immigrating to the United States.
Omolaja’s work covers the story of his life in two distinct sections, beginning with his birth in Ibadan, Nigeria, in 1953. The author spent his early adulthood in the early 1970s, after a stint in the army, moving to different cities looking for work and usually finding it as a driver for wealthier residents, whom he came to see as “educated fools” for their materialist obsessions. Omolaja was raised as a Muslim but had a sudden revelation at the age of 21, when, he says, a disembodied voice whispered in his ear, saying, “Jesus is the Son of God, He is the Lord and the Savior of the world.” His family members had him committed to a mental health institution, he says, but he remained determined to witness for Jesus. His spiritual path eventually led him to Selma University, a historically black Baptist Bible college in Alabama. However, Omolaja later experienced financial hardship as he moved around the American South, attempting to fulfill his calling to minister to the mentally ill and others struggling in society. The book’s second half provides readers with chapters on a range of topics, including practical issues for Christians, such as the importance of water baptisms, and wider theological debates about prophecies, angels, and the might of God. Omolaja accompanies his thoughts on these subjects with ample biblical references and “Spiritual Exercises” in the style of a daily devotional. However, his attempts to address Christian and non-Christian readers alike may leave some readers unsure of how a chapter specifically applies to them. The book’s autobiographical portion offers plenty of engaging and positive ideas, especially when dealing with the author’s difficulty adapting to American life and his unflappably good intentions toward everyone he met. At the same time, readers may find some of his accounts of spiritual encounters difficult to believe, as when he claims to have brought a young child back from the dead.
An uplifting but unfocused remembrance and testimonial.Pub Date: Nov. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64753-086-0
Page Count: 246
Publisher: Urlink Print & Media, LLC
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood.
In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. While McCurdy didn’t emerge from her childhood unscathed, she’s managed to spin her harrowing experience into a sold-out stage act and achieve a form of catharsis that puts her mind, body, and acting career at peace.
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982185-82-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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