by Savya Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A
An eventful, passionate chronicle set in a pivotal period in American history.
A snapshot of bohemian life in mid-20th-century Greenwich Village, as told through a visionary’s extensive journal entries.
Lee’s candid memoir opens in 1942, when she, a 20-year-old virgin, decided to move to New York City’s Greenwich Village and become a lesbian. As World War II raged on and her male contemporaries were drafted into service, Lee was welcomed into a small circle of artists. Lee lost her virginity to bearded, wild-haired Joachim “Jack” Probst and gave up her lesbian dreams in favor of an unconventional life in the Village with him. Theirs was a turbulent match, marred by infidelities, separations and financial instability, which Lee confided through letters to her confidant, worldly friend Wickie. Lee then fled to San Francisco to be an artists’ model and quickly befriended free-spirited Babs, who fell ill to tuberculosis. Sad and disoriented, Lee returned to New York and Probst; soon after, she became pregnant with daughter Lilith. Probst promptly left the scene and Lee ambitiously searched for another romantic connection. She became involved with an older painter, Arthur Gunn, who introduced her to the work of Georgia O’Keeffe, the woman who forms the emotional thrust of the memoir. Lee’s interest was mildly piqued, but it wasn’t until she met O’Keeffe through sculptor Ernest Guteman that she became influenced and spent a summer working with the distinctive artist. Eventually, Lee betrayed Gunn with Guteman, living with him for two years before marrying another man, creative-writing professor Richard Lee. The two moved to California, became involved with spiritual workshops of the ’70s, and Lee had a spiritual awakening while shopping at Sears. Though O’Keeffe and her subsequent impact on the author materialize a bit later than readers will expect, it won’t detract from the memoir’s allure since Lee has already done the spadework of making herself a good-natured, insightful, resilient narrator, brimming with heartfelt emotion.
An eventful, passionate chronicle set in a pivotal period in American history.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-4257-1002-6
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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