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DIVINE DAUGHTERS

LIBERATING THE POWER AND PASSION OF WOMEN'S VOICES

A pain-filled autobiography by vocal artist, and composer Bagby. A former Stanford Law student, the author left school shortly before graduation to find herself. She met singer Bobby McFerrin at one of his concerts and then auditioned for his master class, recording her audition tape on an answering machine because she had no studio access or equipment. Through McFerrin, Bagby began singing with a women’s group called Voicestra, which continues to sustain her both professionally and personally. She interweaves her autobiographical text with lyrics and music from her own compositions, adding flavor to an intensely personal story. Her music emerges from the childhood traumas of dealing with an alcoholic and heroin-addicted father, charming one moment and violent the next; of always playing second fiddle to her musically gifted brother, Nelson; of feeling second-best because she was a daughter and not a son; and of facing racism in educational institutions. As an adult, Bagby has also experienced her share of difficulties. At 25, after leaving law school, she lived on the streets for a month, smoking marijuana every day. When she pulled herself together enough to enroll in an “intentional community,” she was raped on her first night there by a white man. Recovering from that rape has been a difficult process, with more recent heartaches (such as the miscarriage of a longed-for child and her husband’s affair with a white woman) reopening old wounds. Through it all, Bagby tries affirm the female worth, especially the power of daughters, seeking out old stories which show daughters to be of divine lineage. She encourages other women to sing and scream out their own stories, and she offers a clear role model for the refusal to be silent. Raw and very moving, though its terminology (“the red times of my menstrual cycle,” etc.) can be a bit trendy. (Author tour)

Pub Date: May 1, 1999

ISBN: 0-06-251426-1

Page Count: 256

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999

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NIGHT

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. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

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

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