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LET IT BANG

Name: LET IT BANG
Author: RJ Young
ISBN: 978-1-328-82633-6

A YOUNG BLACK MAN’S RELUCTANT ODYSSEY INTO GUNS

by RJ Young ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 23, 2018

Race and guns make an explosive combination.

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Young chronicles his attempts to bond with his white father-in-law by embracing the gun culture that he previously held at arm’s length.

Toward the end of this short memoir about marriage, guns, and race in America, the author writes, “gun culture in America is inherently racist because white people historically fear black men with guns.” He builds a convincing case that the NRA has become predominantly concerned with protecting the Second Amendment rights of white people to protect their property against the black intruders they most fear. He also notes how an increasing number of black people, particularly black women, are arming themselves, feeling like if they don’t protect themselves, who will? “We are in a literal arms race,” he writes, “ramped up by the racialized fear peddled to us by damn near every institutionalized force in the land.” Amid his reportage, his personal story—about his mixed marriage and how it played out in conservative Oklahoma, where he always felt like a minority—doesn’t hold together quite as well. He first noticed his wife-to-be as a privileged white girl at a graduation party where he was the lone black guest. He always thought of her, at least within this book, as white first and was conscious of himself as black first. But they got together and stayed together, at least until the Donald Trump victory, “when my country chose to show its true face, as bigotry stood at the doorstep and opened the door wide,” and as he impulsively shouted, “I hate white people!” His wife, naturally enough, took offense, but rather than proceeding into a discussion of race and complex emotions, it led to the end of the marriage. Before then, however, he had committed himself to becoming a better shot than his marksman father-in-law and an instructor certified by the NRA.

Race and guns make an explosive combination.

Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-328-82633-6

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018

Categories:

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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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.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)