by Sharon Lamb ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 4, 2019
In a concise book, Lamb ably demonstrates the challenges and pitfalls of passing judgment in such an imperfect world.
A psychologist often hired as an expert witness to judge the suitability of other mothers develops doubt about her own mothering.
As the person who is often put in the position of deciding whether a child should remain in a foster home, be placed for adoption, or returned to their birth parents, Lamb (Counseling Psychology/Univ. of Massachusetts Boston; Sex Ed for Caring Schools, 2013, etc.) has long recognized that such decisions aren’t as black-and-white as courts would like them to be. So many of the parents have had issues with addiction, and the author knows well that relapse is usually part of recovery and that lying is a frequent character trait that further confuses the issue. Her understanding of addiction has been deepened by her own experience as the mother of an addict whose deception long fooled her, whose recovery has been punctuated by relapse, and who has left her feeling guilty about whether she is a good enough mother. “Why didn’t I just take over his life then and there, put him on one of those toddler leashes I used to look at with disgust?” she asks after her son suffered another life-threatening relapse. “The average number of relapses for opiate abusers,” she writes, “is seven to nine, and…it takes a while to get clean and stay clean.” Ultimately, she asks, “is it the pattern of standard recovery or of repeated failure?” While lawyers hire her to determine what’s best for the child in a given situation, she knows from her own experience that there is only so much anyone can predict or control. She has learned from Alcoholics Anonymous that the best strategy is to “keep your boundaries high, your expectations low, and your heart open.” It is advice she tries to follow in mothering her recovering son, and she maintains an open-hearted compassion toward mothers battling similar addictions. At the same time, she shows just how tough some decisions can be when lives are on the line.
In a concise book, Lamb ably demonstrates the challenges and pitfalls of passing judgment in such an imperfect world.Pub Date: June 4, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8070-8246-1
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
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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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