As expected from a year’s worth of daily accounts, there are mundane stretches; yet readers unbothered by rough prose will...
Compiling daily journal entries for an entire year, Rooney (The Century Collection, 2008) portrays life in the rougher portions of St. Leonards-on-Sea, England.
Once an elegant town in the south of England, St. Leonards-on-Sea is now scarred by crime, homelessness and drug abuse. As a volunteer with local charities and general friend to the homeless, the author develops a special relationship with the street people who inhabit the town. He chronicles the difficult lives these people live, along with notes on his own troubled life, creating a window into the struggles of individuals who might not be alive if it weren’t for soup kitchens and government-sponsored methadone. The stories of such people prove shocking albeit repetitive, as drug addicts continually seek drugs and the homeless continually seek shelter. A written record for every single day of the year gives the book a measure of completeness but also a hint of dull redundancy. Among all the heroin addicts and petty thieves, many aren’t particularly distinguishable; in fact, the author himself emerges as the most engaging character: He’s “been with a hundred, or so, beautiful women around the world, and married two of them, one in a hot-air balloon, and done things you could never imagine in your wildest fantasies.” Much of his time in the book is spent going to the hospital for various ailments or trying to get back a security deposit on an apartment, but he’s every bit as edgy as the people from the street. His adventures include experimenting with crack, speaking in tongues during a church service and speeding around in his Jaguar in an impromptu street race. Though notable, these events aren’t always described with the clearest prose; a thorough edit could help clean up several passages.
As expected from a year’s worth of daily accounts, there are mundane stretches; yet readers unbothered by rough prose will find plenty of southern England street-life episodes worth reading about.Pub Date: July 5, 2012
ISBN: 978-1468582772
Page Count: 524
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
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A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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