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The Covering

Hill (Forgiving Them, 2013, etc.) details her journey from a childhood of poverty to an adulthood of success.
Growing up with a difficult mother, a sexually abusive acquaintance and an awful diet—“A typical meal might be spaghetti with butter, salt, and pepper on it or potatoes with butter, salt, and pepper….No fruit, no vegetables, no nutrients, in my mind”—Hill had a childhood that was far from simple. Born in 1949 in an America still in the thralls of racial discrimination, Hill, who is black, found that race was always an issue. And whether in the form of institutional segregation, the views espoused by her mother or in the opinions of other people, race is a frequent issue throughout the book. In response to her outgoing personality as a child, Hill says, “I was singled out as an ‘Oreo,’ people saying that I was ‘trying to be white.’ ” Despite racial animosity, a teenage pregnancy, and a variety of other trials ranging from learning to drive to learning to forgive, the author nonetheless relates a success story founded on hard work and an unfaltering belief in God. After developing a desire to become an electroencephalogram technician, she overcame adversity through perseverance, a faith in the Almighty, and a general belief that everything happens for a reason. “Through tenacity, I know that what happened to me was not accidental—was not coincidental, but providential,” she says. Alive with details and inner reflections, the book makes the author’s journey a truly personal one, with the different stages of her life made real and understandable for readers. Why did she become so entranced with becoming an EEG technician? Why was it so important for her to learn how to drive? The answers here are fleshed out with the thought processes that surrounded them. Occasional portions (such as early struggles with her mother) can prove repetitive, yet the overall result is an authentic, ultimately triumphant story.
An inspirational memoir born from the fruits of hard work and faith.

Pub Date: May 21, 2014

ISBN: 978-0615948584

Page Count: 302

Publisher: Rosie M. Hill

Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2014

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IN MY PLACE

From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992

ISBN: 0-374-17563-2

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992

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THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE

50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...

Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").

Pub Date: May 15, 1972

ISBN: 0205632645

Page Count: 105

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972

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