Livingston overcomes the collection’s inconsistencies with her dexterity in addressing an impressive range of questions...
Livingston (MFA Program/Univ. of Memphis; Ghostbread, 2009) weaves her own memories throughout ruminations on famous mythical goddesses and pop-culture icons to explore what becoming a woman means both for her—as a Roman Catholic girl coming of age in the late 1980s—and, more broadly, within the context of the real and fictitious women who surround her.
“Shopping days were like a holiday to a family of seven children,” writes the author in “Our Lady of the Lakes.” Although her mother, a single parent living in poverty, usually bought off-brand, “or—God forbid—margarine,” sometimes they were graced with the presence of Land O’Lakes butter. Livingston describes how her siblings would fight about who could play with the package’s cardboard panels. They all wanted to be the one to fold the package just right so that the maiden’s knees became a “stunning pair of breasts, the polished divots looking for all the world like perfectly bronzed nipples.” The author’s balancing act between her own narrative and the backdrop of larger cultural images of womanhood threads throughout this collection, as she tackles such subjects as fertility, teenage pregnancy, loss, and poverty. Some essays—e.g., “The Lady with the Alligator Purse,” which explores her fascination with Susan B. Anthony—have notes of playfulness. “What I’m most interested in,” Livingston tells a friend, “is whether the woman ever had any fun.” Others pieces are decidedly more somber—e.g., “One for Sorrow,” in which the author shares the unique ways young girls lied to her in her time as a school counselor. While Livingston’s prose shines, the pacing and cohesion of the collection occasionally feel off—some topics are exhaustive, while others, like her relationship with her niece, will leave readers wanting more.
Livingston overcomes the collection’s inconsistencies with her dexterity in addressing an impressive range of questions regarding humanity, femininity, and growing up in America.Pub Date: April 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8032-8067-0
Page Count: 168
Publisher: Univ. of Nebraska
Review Posted Online: Feb. 10, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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