by Roslynn Bryant ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 20, 2015
An intensely personal manual outlining both the challenges and the hopes of key aspects of the Christian experience.
A guide explores some of the trials facing modern-day Christians.
In this slim book, Bryant (God’s Servant, 2016, etc.) intertwines general observations about the problems facing fundamentalist Christians with more specific autobiographical segments. She tells the story of her spiritual overcompensations, at one point becoming a “prude” with no visible humanity. She recalls having a mental breakdown and being hospitalized in 2000, emerging in a fragile, unformed state and embarking on a “roller coaster” ride in her personal and spiritual life. The theme running through most of her personal tales is one of self-help, of having the strength and perspective to concentrate on herself. “I learned that the best way to demonstrate that I loved the ones who cared for me,” she writes, “was to take care of myself.” And the author keeps her eye on the bigger picture, reminding her readers that when it comes to invidious self-doubt and the envy of others, they should remember always that the only relationship they need to prioritize is the one with the Lord. The author recounts her struggles with self-image in moving terms; she finally reminded herself that she was as God made her. The book’s standout flaw stems directly from Bryant’s unwillingness to extend such understanding, implying at one point that both promiscuity and gay sexuality are the direct results of the “shame, confusion, and guilt” of sexual abuse. When the author herself was the victim of inappropriate fondling, she remembers that she briefly found herself attracted to women until intense prayer created a breakthrough and allowed her to throw off her “oppression.” The rest of the book is more welcoming, reminding Christian readers that they are called to service rather than status. The whole text is rendered in a clear, approachable tone that should appeal to readers who have been encountering obstacles of their own in their faith journeys.
An intensely personal manual outlining both the challenges and the hopes of key aspects of the Christian experience.Pub Date: Nov. 20, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-68197-012-7
Page Count: 52
Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992
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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by William Strunk & E.B. White ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 15, 1972
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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