by Sooyong Park ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 10, 2015
A heartfelt memoir that reflects the author’s respect and love for a wild and pitiless world.
A memoir from a researcher who tracks rare and elusive wild beasts.
Documentary filmmaker Park has been studying Siberian tigers for more than 20 years, following their traces across nature reserves and spending frigid winter months in underground earthen bunkers, his camera trained on the snow-covered landscape. In evocative prose, the author recounts his search for several of these naturally secretive animals: a female he named Bloody Mary and her cubs, whose territory covered more than 500 square kilometers of treacherous terrain. As he sadly notes, Siberian tigers are threatened with extinction by poachers, who can get more than $30,000 for a wild animal. A population that was once 10,000 is now merely 350; at the same time, the number of indigenous Ussuri also has been reduced from several hundred thousand to 10,000, a woeful decimation of culture. Hunters, fishers, and root-gatherers, the Ussuri, Park writes, “see this world as a place where spirits pass through eternal cycles,” where “everything in the world is a living thing that gives and receives energy.” Their animistic beliefs lead them to feel a special bond with birches and willows and to worship tigers; they call the strongest male tiger the Great King. Tracing prints, claw marks, urine markers, droppings, and the remains of prey, Park closes in on Bloody Mary. But tigers, he knows, are crafty and smart. “They figure out human intentions based on behavior, expressions, and the energy radiated by people and take precautions or even attack accordingly,” he writes. They can distinguish between an herb collector’s satchel and a hunter’s rifle, between the smell of cigarettes or cosmetics. Living in solitary confinement during the brutal winter months, waiting patiently for Bloody Mary to appear, Park felt he had gained access to “the intimate depths of nature,” and he shares this intimacy with readers.
A heartfelt memoir that reflects the author’s respect and love for a wild and pitiless world.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-77164-113-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Greystone Books
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015
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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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by Richard Wright ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 28, 1945
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
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