An eloquently thoughtful memoir in essays.
A respected novelist muses on the tortured nature of her relationship to the state where she was born and raised.
Askew (Creative Writing/Univ. of Oklahoma; Kind of Kin, 2013, etc.) often thought of Oklahoma as “a black hole…a literal and figurative no-man’s land” that she escaped by going to New York and teaching. But as she grew older, the author found that her greatest wish was to go home. In this collection of nine essays, Askew considers her life in relation to the question of what it means to be Oklahoman and American. For most, to be an Oklahoman means to come from a vaguely anonymous place located “somewhere in the middle of the country.” Yet for Askew, Oklahoma is more like “the underbelly, the very gut of the nation” that Americans would prefer to forget. It has been the site of many historic tragedies, including the 1838 Cherokee Trail of Tears, the 1921 Tulsa race riots, and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which happened not long after Askew began feeling the pull to return. Realizing that her background kept racism and other dark secrets at bay, the author speaks frankly about growing up with “all the privileges and presumptions of whiteness.” At the same time, she discusses the ways in which her adult experiences, both in New York and Oklahoma, forced her to face what her upbringing had left unspoken. In “Passing,” for example, Askew addresses the question of a “nebulous heritage” that may have erased her Cherokee ancestry, while in “A Wounded Place,” she discusses how she learned about being black and male after becoming the godmother of a black boy. Honest and searching, Askew’s book deftly interweaves a personal narrative about belonging with a larger cultural one. The author also offers hope that “the worst sins” of who we are as Americans can be balanced by “the best of what’s worst and best in us.”
An eloquently thoughtful memoir in essays.Pub Date: June 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8061-5717-7
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Univ. of Oklahoma
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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