Having survived the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge, Cambodian refugee Paul Thai made his way to the US in 1981. Here, told choppily by free-lancer Fiffer (Chicago magazine, Inside Sports, etc.) is Thai's story from his family's escape into Thailand to his days with the Dallas Police Department. Sponsored by the International Rescue Committee, Thai, then 18, and his family left the Thai-Cambodian border refugee camps and flew directly from Bangkok to Dallas. Following the horrors of the Khmer Rouge takeover in 1975 and the later fighting between the Vietnamese and the ``Cambodian Freedom Fighters,'' Thai's middle- class family arrived in Texas—a place where cowboys ``shoot you down in the street''—with all the attendant cultural confusion. Placed in the ``Little Asia'' section of East Dallas, Thai, who desperately wanted to go to school, was given a job as a school custodian. He quickly learned English and volunteered as a translator with local churches and relief agencies for other refugees. When the Dallas police founded the East Dallas Community and Refugees Affairs Office (a ``storefront'' police outpost), Thai was a natural choice as a police service officer (PSO). Though PSOs went unarmed, they were required to attend the full 17 weeks at the police academy. Still thinking he might become a teacher, Thai liked police work so much that he became a US citizen and went through the academy again, this time to become a full police officer. He became discouraged, however, at the hostility and discrimination he faced from training officers and members of the community, and quit during his field training to continue his education. As of January 1991, Thai was attending the Univ. of Texas and considering reapplying to the police academy. While not the most scintillating of stories, the insights Fiffer provides into cross-cultural difficulties and the horrific descriptions of the killing fields and the refugee camps lend this an undeniable urgency. (Photos—not seen.)
Pub Date: Sept. 30, 1991
ISBN: 1-55778-326-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1991
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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