The author continues and deepens the testimony first presented in her 1980s autobiography, I, Rigoberta Mench£ (not reviewed). Mench£ begins here with her being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 and her subsequent return to her native Guatemala in 1994. In exile for most of the 20 years previous, she had spent her time campaigning ceaselessly against the murderous counterinsurgency campaigns in Guatemala that claimed the lives of thousands, including her parents and several siblings. She became a strong advocate for human rights, especially for the rights of the indigenous people of her own land and throughout the world. The Nobel Peace Prize has, in fact, brought her little peace. Upon his return to Guatemala, her nephew, mistaken for her son, is immediately kidnaped (and, thankfully, returned). Weeks before the country’s first reasonably open elections in a generation, the army carries out yet another massacre, in the village of Xaman. Amid this setting of hope and despair, Mench£ meditates on several themes. She speaks lyrically (the translation seems wonderful) of the sweet mysteries of her Mayan childhood, of the “cosmovision” of her people, of the wisdom, boldness, and courage of her mother. These make up her identity, her nawaal, the shadow that accompanies her and sustains her. She tells of the frustrations of her work at the United Nations, where the simple recognition of the existence of indigenous people was a major struggle. She reveals dreams, spiritual and political, that are yet to be. She dreams of a world accepting of difference, of “pluri-cultural” societies, of a time when her “Indian” face will not mark her as the other, of a time of justice. She dreams of her hair growing white, a symbol of wisdom that her mother, whose life was cut short, was denied. Mench£ emerges here as precisely what she is, a hero. (maps, not seen)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1998
ISBN: 1-85984-893-1
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Verso
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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