An honest and informative account with well-organized, useful advice for the abused.
A writer recounts the sexual and emotional abuse she suffered as a child in this debut memoir that offers encouragement and support to other victims.
Moreno grew up in Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, a Milwaukee suburb. She describes her family life during her early childhood years: “We were close, we were happy, and it all seemed to be normal.” Still, the picture she paints is one of a seriously dysfunctional family controlled by a self-indulgent, domineering father. According to the author, when she was 7 years old, her father’s brother, who was then in his 20s, began sexually molesting her, introducing her to a game he called “horsey.” The abuse continued for two years until Moreno’s mother discovered what was happening. At this point, the author’s uncle and paternal grandparents had been living with her and her parents. He was forced to move out, causing serious fissures in the extended family. Moreno then worked with a psychotherapist and was moving forward. But, when she was in her early teens, her mother began working outside the home; her father, a serial philanderer, used this opportunity to force her to watch pornographic movies with him. She was afraid to tell anyone. Eventually, her father walked out on her and her mother, cleaning out their bank accounts, canceling Moreno’s credit card, and leaving behind a pile of unpaid bills, including two mortgages on the house. Some uneven prose and repetition undercut the strength of the narrative. But the author does a fine job of portraying herself as a strong survivor and role model, urging victims to take charge of their lives and, most especially, remove themselves from dangerous relationships. She writes: “You, as the victim, need to have the willingness and strength to make the necessary changes to survive.” She clearly details the steps that should be taken in order to make a safe escape, and she provides a helpful list of websites and agencies that can deliver assistance. There is also a section devoted to people she calls “bystanders,” those who may be able to supply aid.
An honest and informative account with well-organized, useful advice for the abused.Pub Date: April 29, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-982226-62-6
Page Count: 108
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: Jan. 29, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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