An intriguing, if disjointed, guide to Ghana and to one man’s life of faith.
A memoir of an African childhood, a tourist guide to Ghana, and an inspirational Adventist tract combine in Kwarteng’s debut work of nonfiction, written with MacLaren (Faith into Miracles, 2012).
In his youth, Kwarteng lived in conditions that he modestly calls “very primitive by western standards,” in the Ashanti region of Ghana. Although he dreamed of being a postal worker, his home “was not a country where you could apply for a job, pass a test, and be accepted.” The local government, he says, provided no aid and little guidance for schoolchildren—a point for which he chides them repeatedly. His parents immigrated to America in 1996 and, years later, he was able to join them. There, he says, he was aided by his strong faith in God in achieving his dream: he became a worker for the U.S. Postal Service. “Without God,” he frequently tells readers, “there is nothing you can do on this earth.” This story of the author’s childhood in Ghana also serves as a travel manual and a grab-bag of photographs, philosophical reflections, and parables. The book’s structure, though, is curious: chapters begin in autobiography but turn into collections of self-described “random ideas.” Sometimes they’re inspirational perorations on the faith of the Seventh-day Adventist Church (of which Kwarteng is a member), but most often, he offers a travel guide to modern Ghana, briefly addressing such subtopics as Ghanaian medical care, the wisdom of retiring to that country, local currencies, and so on. The book is credited to two authors, but the text doesn’t always clarify who’s speaking. It always uses a first-person perspective, but sometimes it refers to Kwarteng in the third person. Also, the mother of Kwarteng’s children is named “Gloria” in the text, but he thanks “Maybell for giving birth to my lovely children” in the acknowledgements. Still, much of the information here is worth knowing, and Kwarteng is surely to be commended on a life well-lived and for having the courage to follow his dreams.
An intriguing, if disjointed, guide to Ghana and to one man’s life of faith.Pub Date: March 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5236-9841-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 11, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.
A lightweight collection of self-help snippets from the bestselling author.
What makes a quote a quote? Does it have to be quoted by someone other than the original author? Apparently not, if we take Strayed’s collection of truisms as an example. The well-known memoirist (Wild), novelist (Torch), and radio-show host (“Dear Sugar”) pulls lines from her previous pages and delivers them one at a time in this small, gift-sized book. No excerpt exceeds one page in length, and some are only one line long. Strayed doesn’t reference the books she’s drawing from, so the quotes stand without context and are strung together without apparent attention to structure or narrative flow. Thus, we move back and forth from first-person tales from the Pacific Crest Trail to conversational tidbits to meditations on grief. Some are astoundingly simple, such as Strayed’s declaration that “Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard.” Others call on the author’s unique observations—people who regret what they haven’t done, she writes, end up “mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions” of themselves—and offer a reward for wading through obvious advice like “Trust your gut.” Other quotes sound familiar—not necessarily because you’ve read Strayed’s other work, but likely due to the influence of other authors on her writing. When she writes about blooming into your own authenticity, for instance, one is immediately reminded of Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Strayed’s true blossoming happens in her longer works; while this collection might brighten someone’s day—and is sure to sell plenty of copies during the holidays—it’s no substitute for the real thing.
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-946909
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
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