A bold, intimate, welcome examination of reconciling one’s faith in America.
One woman’s personal examination of Muslim and American values.
In this follow-up to her comparative study of Muslim, Christian and Jewish identity (The Faith Club, co-authored with Suzanne Oliver and Priscilla Warner, 2006), Idliby hones in on her family’s experiences as American Muslims immediately following 9/11. The author and her husband, then longtime Manhattanites and self-described “secular Muslims,” suddenly found themselves and their children challenged by “Muslims who speak for us and Americans who reject us.” Thus confronted with repeated calls to account for the whole of Islam, and skewed views of a violent Islam at that, Idliby was forced to look within at what Muslim and American values she held dear. The author charts that reflection, as this daughter of a Palestinian father and Kuwaiti mother who had spent her youth shuttling between Virginia and Dubai painfully relates to her own children’s post-9/11 sense of being the “other.” Hoping for better for her American-born children, Idliby tailors her remarks for a largely Islam-illiterate American audience, debunking a number of widespread misconceptions about Islam. Refusing to have her children’s worldviews constricted by “clerics who peddle seventh century absolute orthodoxy as the only true Islam,” Idliby strongly advocates for reading the Quran in the cultural context of its time and not as literal doctrine for 21st-century society. For example, the author explains that female head-covering is a social convention and admonishes those donning the niqab (full face covering) for opting to be “buried alive under a black tent” and, thereby, “erased of their identities.” In Mecca, Islam’s holiest city, Idliby also points out, “face coverings are banned,” underscoring one of the memoir’s central points—that “Islam is not a nationality, but a faith, as diverse and varied as its many billion adherents.” Such diversity of belief, Idliby compellingly argues, aligns well with American individualism and cherished beliefs in equality, diversity and justice.
A bold, intimate, welcome examination of reconciling one’s faith in America.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-230-34184-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2013
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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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