A wise and humane memoir.
A collaborative memoir in two voices that celebrates the life, creativity, and accomplishments of a little-discussed but no less important female civil rights activist.
Rosemarie Harding (1930-2004) never achieved the iconic status of Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King Jr. Yet she made many significant contributions to the civil rights movement, especially in the work she did to connect spirituality to the larger project of social justice. In this memoir, Harding tells the story of her life through a series of personal essays, fictional stories, and poems, which her daughter, Rachel, interweaves with her own memories and observations. The child of Georgia-born African-Americans who had migrated north to escape racism and violence, Harding grew up in the relative safety of Chicago. But when she was in her early 20s, she returned to the South with her husband as part of a church-based mission to use reconciliation and peacemaking as tools in the struggle for civil rights. Christianity was only one of the spiritual traditions upon which Harding drew for her work. Over time, she incorporated insights from others—including Tibetan Buddhism and Afro-Brazilian Candomblé—to help the African-American community transcend generations of “collective trauma.” In the words of her daughter, Harding’s ultimate goal was to teach people how to transform their pain and anger into “something useful...a song, a dance [or] some poetry for those following behind.” Her own life eventually became a study in finding spiritual balance when she was diagnosed with an especially pernicious form of diabetes. Fighting for her dignity, Harding would come to a deeply visceral understanding that the journey to wholeness began from the “ ‘remnant’ quality of spirit” within the self that allowed for hope to shine through, even in the most desperate of circumstances.
A wise and humane memoir.Pub Date: May 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8223-5879-4
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Duke Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
A straightforward tale of kindness and paying it forward in 1980s New York.
When advertising executive Schroff answered a child’s request for spare change by inviting him for lunch, she did not expect the encounter to grow into a friendship that would endure into his adulthood. The author recounts how she and Maurice, a promising boy from a drug-addicted family, learned to trust each other. Schroff acknowledges risks—including the possibility of her actions being misconstrued and the tension of crossing socio-economic divides—but does not dwell on the complexities of homelessness or the philosophical problems of altruism. She does not question whether public recognition is beneficial, or whether it is sufficient for the recipient to realize the extent of what has been done. With the assistance of People human-interest writer Tresniowski (Tiger Virtues, 2005, etc.), Schroff adheres to a personal narrative that traces her troubled relationship with her father, her meetings with Maurice and his background, all while avoiding direct parallels, noting that their childhoods differed in severity even if they shared similar emotional voids. With feel-good dramatizations, the story seldom transcends the message that reaching out makes a difference. It is framed in simple terms, from attributing the first meeting to “two people with complicated pasts and fragile dreams” that were “somehow meant to be friends” to the conclusion that love is a driving force. Admirably, Schroff notes that she did not seek a role as a “substitute parent,” and she does not judge Maurice’s mother for her lifestyle. That both main figures experience a few setbacks yet eventually survive is never in question; the story fittingly concludes with an epilogue by Maurice. For readers seeking an uplifting reminder that small gestures matter.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4516-4251-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Howard Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
As with nearly all of Lewis’ books, this one succeeds on so many levels, including as a well-written primer on how the...
Lewis (The Undoing Project: A Friendship that Changed Our Minds, 2016, etc.) turns timely political reporting he published in Vanity Fair into a book about federal government bureaucracies during the first year of the Donald Trump presidency.
At first, the author’s curiosity about the relationship between individual citizens and massive federal agencies supported by taxpayer dollars did not lead him to believe the book would become a searing indictment of Trump. However, Lewis wisely allowed the evidence to dictate the narrative, resulting in a book-length indictment of Trump’s disastrous administration. The leading charge of the indictment is what Lewis terms “willful ignorance.” Neither Trump nor his appointees to head government agencies have demonstrated even the slightest curiosity about how those agencies actually function. After Trump’s election in November 2016, nobody from his soon-to-be-inaugurated administration visited federal agencies despite thorough preparation within those agencies to assist in a traditionally nonpartisan transition. Lewis primarily focuses on the Energy Department, the Agriculture Department, and the Commerce Department. To provide context, he contrasts the competent transition teams assembled after the previous elections of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Displaying his usual meticulous research and fluid prose, the author makes the federal bureaucracy come alive by focusing on a few individuals within each agency with fascinating—and sometimes heartwarming—backstories. In addition, Lewis explains why each of those individuals is important to the citizenry due to their sometimes-arcane but always crucial roles within the government. Throughout the book, unforgettable tidbits emerge, such as the disclosure by a Forbes magazine compiler of the world’s wealthiest individuals list that only three tycoons have intentionally misled the list’s compilers—one of the three is Trump, and another is Wilbur Ross, appointed by Trump as Commerce Secretary.
As with nearly all of Lewis’ books, this one succeeds on so many levels, including as a well-written primer on how the government serves citizens in underappreciated ways.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-324-00264-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2018
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