A solid exploration of China past and present in which the author climbs “a punishing mountain of history with [his]...
In his first book, Marketplace correspondent Tong offers a unique look into the lives of his Chinese relatives since the communist takeover in 1949.
Though the narrative is sometimes confusing as the author runs through the lists of maternal and paternal grandparents and great-grandparents (though the character list at the beginning is helpful), it is particularly interesting in that, as his relatives say, it was the same for everyone; they all suffered. Tong’s decision to write about his family’s past was driven by the fact that so many in his family wanted to bury it. As the China bureau chief for Marketplace, he was well-placed to seek out the histories of his ancestors. The most intriguing story is that of his maternal grandmother, Mildred Zhao, who moved to Shanghai after the great flood of 1931 and ended up founding the Light of the Sea Primary School with her husband, Carleton Sun. After the communists took over the mainland in 1949, she left Shanghai for Hong Kong, and Carleton sent the children on a year later, staying behind to run the school. He was arrested in 1951 and convicted as a counterrevolutionary, and he received a 15-year sentence. Many of these stories are heartbreaking narratives of separation, of wives escaping with their children and husbands taking one but leaving other children behind. The book also represents Tong’s search for a history to pass on to his children. “Sometimes you have to flip back in the album to try to understand the pictures you’re seeing now,” he writes. “And flip slowly.” The author ends with an exposé of the baby-selling market and the dodgy methods often used to procure children for Americans desperate to adopt.
A solid exploration of China past and present in which the author climbs “a punishing mountain of history with [his] intergenerational team.”Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-226-33886-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Univ. of Chicago
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2017
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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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