Assiduous research and clear prose give Murray her due.
A cradle-to-grave account about one of the most interesting, accomplished, and controversial figures in 20th-century America who is far too little known.
Pauli Murray (1910-1985), who fought valiantly against Jim Crow prejudice, came to be known as “Jane Crow” due to her mixed-race heritage, her female gender, and her own perception of herself as transgender. As Rosenberg (Emerita, History/Barnard Coll.; Changing the Subject: How the Women of Columbia Shaped the Way We Think About Sex and Politics, 2004, etc.) shows, Murray, never at ease psychologically, descended from a long line of mentally ill family members, and orphaned early—her father was murdered, and her mother was rendered frail by repeated childbirth—overcame countless obstacles throughout her life. She left her racially charged North Carolina home to earn a college degree in New York City, bounced back from being rejected for graduate studies at the University of North Carolina because of her part-black heritage (even though her white great-great-grandfather had served on the governing board there), graduated from Howard University Law School, and began influencing public policy outside academia. Murray’s work on discrimination influenced lawyers and judges to desegregate public schools, protect the constitutional rights of women, and move toward protecting other minorities as well. She considered herself queer in terms of sexuality, often dressing so that distinguishing her gender proved difficult; in terms of gay and queer rights in general, she was clearly way ahead of her time. Later in life, Murray inspired Betty Friedan and others to co-found the National Organization for Women, smashed academic barriers at Brandeis University, and earned ordination in the Episcopal Church as the first female black priest. One of Rosenberg’s most fascinating extended anecdotes illuminates Murray’s struggle to write and publish her 1956 memoir, Proud Shoes. She gained attention as a memoirist around the same time that Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin were also breaking racial and class barriers as authors.
Assiduous research and clear prose give Murray her due.Pub Date: April 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-19-065645-4
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
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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