A sturdy book of traditional wisdom and prescriptions for recovery.
An Ojibwa author fulfills his obligation by passing down his life’s wisdom to his son.
Before his death in 2017, Wagamese (Starlight, 2018, etc.) had earned renown in his native Canada for his memoirs and novels. He had also completed this book for his son, then 6 years old. As he explains to the son who barely knew him, “drinking is why we are separated. That’s the plain and simple truth of it. I was a drunk and never faced the truth about myself—that I was a drunk. Booze owned me.” The author then proceeds to revisit a childhood of foster homes and adoption, of feeling like he never fit in or belonged, and of running away to find comfort in transient street life and a community of sorts among others who lived a life of petty crime to subsidize their various addictions. He writes about his search for identity in Ojibwa traditions and what he later considered the misguided “influence of militant Native groups like the American Indian Movement.” “I became racist in my thinking,” he writes, “and it was easy to blame the white man and society for my ordeals. In fact, it made more sense than anything I’d thought of or heard before.” Much of the narrative follows Wagamese’s three days in the wilderness, with only a blanket, at the behest of a recovering alcoholic who thought Ojibwa teachings could help his friend in recovery. Only after he finished was the author told that this had been his “Vision Quest.” The author mixes reflections on the course of his life with dreams he had during those three nights along with Native legends and traditions, illuminating the significance of the pipe and the drum. “As Ojibway men, we are taught that it is the father’s responsibility to introduce our children to the world,” he writes to his son, and this posthumous publication is part of the legacy he passes along.
A sturdy book of traditional wisdom and prescriptions for recovery.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-57131-389-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Milkweed
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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