An enriching study for the novel’s many devoted readers.
A close look at the genesis, impact, and transformation of a beloved novel.
Melding memoir, biography, and cultural criticism, Tillet, a professor, activist, and scholar of African American studies, uses Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple, published in 1982, as a mirror for portraying Black women’s experiences in American life over nearly 40 years. In conversations with Tillet, Walker spoke candidly about her early years, literary influences, and the challenges she faced in getting published; after sending an excerpt to Essence magazine, for example, she received a terse reply: “Black people don’t talk like that.” Although the novel was awarded both a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award, it incited considerable controversy, not only for Walker’s use of Black dialect, but also “its celebration of lesbianism. The harshest criticism,” Tillet discovered, “came from other writers, mainly black men who accused Walker of reproducing racist stereotypes of them as hyperviolent rapists.” It was precisely Walker’s portrayal of violence to which Tillet, twice a victim of sexual assault, responded, and through her research, she found many others—including Oprah Winfrey—“who came across the book at such vulnerable points in their lives that the book became a talisman, with every subsequent return to it a way of marking time and healing wounds.” Tillet draws deftly on published and archival sources as well as interviews, including talks with Oprah, who made her screen debut in Steven Spielberg’s film of the novel, which received 11 Oscar nominations; and Scott Sanders, who brought the novel to Broadway as a musical, where it was nominated for multiple Tony awards. Because of the novel’s groundbreaking themes of sexual assault, same-sex desire, and the linking of sexism, racism, and classism, Walker, Tillet asserts, became “the face of black feminism,” an accolade with which Gloria Steinem, in an appreciative foreword, concurs.
An enriching study for the novel’s many devoted readers.Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3530-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood.
In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. While McCurdy didn’t emerge from her childhood unscathed, she’s managed to spin her harrowing experience into a sold-out stage act and achieve a form of catharsis that puts her mind, body, and acting career at peace.
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982185-82-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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