An Israeli author offers advice on breaking free from familial cycles of manipulation and conditional love.
Shiri-Horowitz (Hope to See You Soon, 2014, etc.) grew up with a possessive, critical mother. It’s a vicious cycle, she argues: Women who lacked a mother’s unconditional love repeat the same pattern of treatment when they become parents. Her own mother “remained hurt, and hurtful. She copied her mother’s maternal paradigm.” The first chapter helpfully sets out the 10 characteristics of narcissistic mothers. These include concern with appearances, jealousy between mother and daughter, and a lack of respect for the child’s individual identity. In this framework, the father is often a passive partner who tries feebly to make peace. Shiri-Horowitz describes her father as “weak,” “overshadowed,” and absent-seeming. Emotional neglect is a powerful force, the author contends, and contrasts with the seeming perfection of a family seen from the outside: Her mother kept up a convincing facade, with her home and children well-kempt. No one could have guessed there was emotional abuse behind the scenes. At times, this edged into physical abuse, as when her mother threw her to the floor while verbally disowning her. Shiri-Horowitz capably weaves telling incidents from her own history with the psychological insights she has gained into narcissism. She stresses the importance of setting boundaries and finding your own voice, such as by writing a letter to your childhood self. A final poem is especially effective at dramatizing the battle of wills between mother and daughter: “Mom, you do not know / Where you start and where I / End—you are not me and I am not you.” This volume will undoubtedly be helpful to readers who recognize their own families here. It’s a short and well-structured work, though it repeats some facts (for example, the author’s mother hurling her to the floor). The book is also heavily indebted to Karyl McBride’s Will I Ever Be Good Enough? Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers.
A succinct and useful self-help guide for those who have been emotionally damaged by narcissists.Pub Date: Dec. 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-64204-729-5
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Horowitz Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 30, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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BOOK REVIEW
Noted jazz and pop record producer Thiele offers a chatty autobiography. Aided by record-business colleague Golden, Thiele traces his career from his start as a ``pubescent, novice jazz record producer'' in the 1940s through the '50s, when he headed Coral, Dot, and Roulette Records, and the '60s, when he worked for ABC and ran the famous Impulse! jazz label. At Coral, Thiele championed the work of ``hillbilly'' singer Buddy Holly, although the only sessions he produced with Holly were marred by saccharine strings. The producer specialized in more mainstream popsters like the irrepressibly perky Teresa Brewer (who later became his fourth wife) and the bubble-machine muzak-meister Lawrence Welk. At Dot, Thiele was instrumental in recording Jack Kerouac's famous beat- generation ramblings to jazz accompaniment (recordings that Dot's president found ``pornographic''), while also overseeing a steady stream of pop hits. He then moved to the Mafia-controlled Roulette label, where he observed the ``silk-suited, pinky-ringed'' entourage who frequented the label's offices. Incredibly, however, Thiele remembers the famously hard-nosed Morris Levy, who ran the label and was eventually convicted of extortion, as ``one of the kindest, most warm-hearted, and classiest music men I have ever known.'' At ABC/Impulse!, Thiele oversaw the classic recordings of John Coltrane, although he is the first to admit that Coltrane essentially produced his own sessions. Like many producers of the day, Thiele participated in the ownership of publishing rights to some of the songs he recorded; he makes no apology for this practice, which he calls ``entirely appropriate and without any ethical conflicts.'' A pleasant, if not exactly riveting, memoir that will be of most interest to those with a thirst for cocktail-hour stories of the record biz. (25 halftones, not seen)
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-19-508629-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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This early reader is an excellent introduction to the March on Washington in 1963 and the important role in the march played by Martin Luther King Jr. Ruffin gives the book a good, dramatic start: “August 28, 1963. It is a hot summer day in Washington, D.C. More than 250,00 people are pouring into the city.” They have come to protest the treatment of African-Americans here in the US. With stirring original artwork mixed with photographs of the events (and the segregationist policies in the South, such as separate drinking fountains and entrances to public buildings), Ruffin writes of how an end to slavery didn’t mark true equality and that these rights had to be fought for—through marches and sit-ins and words, particularly those of Dr. King, and particularly on that fateful day in Washington. Within a year the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had been passed: “It does not change everything. But it is a beginning.” Lots of visual cues will help new readers through the fairly simple text, but it is the power of the story that will keep them turning the pages. (Easy reader. 6-8)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-448-42421-5
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2000
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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