A few good anecdotes, but with few insights.
Incomplete account of one woman’s experience growing up as a fundamentalist Christian.
Hartford Courant columnist Campbell was raised in Missouri as a member of the church of Christ (they were taught not to capitalize church). She describes herself in girlhood as a true believer, utterly devoted to Jesus and immersed in the life of her congregation. As time passed, she began asking questions about the role of her gender within her church and society. Coming upon the story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the library one day, Campbell’s eyes were opened to the concept of feminism, changing her life forever. Despite holding on to her church involvement for a number of years, she eventually left organized religion. Though at times affecting and humorous, her memoir has a number of flaws. Campbell tends to dwell on particular events that highlight her personal insecurities and have little to do with the supposed subject matter. Several pages recall the night she spent as a sophomore at the homecoming game, hashing out her angst from that mundane moment. Though her faith background and her budding feminism color the event to some degree, readers are forced to act as therapists while the author relives her worries over being the only virgin (she thinks) in the homecoming court. Her tomboy status as a female athlete, her level of physical attractiveness and her inexperience with boys surface continually, revealing little new about such universal issues. Campbell also leaves out her entire transformation from churchgoing youth to “floater”: someone who does not attend worship but still believes in God. Although the author describes her personal experience of growing up in the church as characterized by fear and guilt, she displays an obvious nostalgia for her old faith. If it was so bad, why did she like it so much?
A few good anecdotes, but with few insights.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-8070-1066-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2008
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
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.
In her first nonfiction book, novelist Grande (Dancing with Butterflies, 2009, etc.) delves into her family’s cycle of separation and reunification.
Raised in poverty so severe that spaghetti reminded her of the tapeworms endemic to children in her Mexican hometown, the author is her family’s only college graduate and writer, whose honors include an American Book Award and International Latino Book Award. Though she was too young to remember her father when he entered the United States illegally seeking money to improve life for his family, she idolized him from afar. However, she also blamed him for taking away her mother after he sent for her when the author was not yet 5 years old. Though she emulated her sister, she ultimately answered to herself, and both siblings constantly sought affirmation of their parents’ love, whether they were present or not. When one caused disappointment, the siblings focused their hopes on the other. These contradictions prove to be the narrator’s hallmarks, as she consistently displays a fierce willingness to ask tough questions, accept startling answers, and candidly render emotional and physical violence. Even as a girl, Grande understood the redemptive power of language to define—in the U.S., her name’s literal translation, “big queen,” led to ridicule from other children—and to complicate. In spelling class, when a teacher used the sentence “my mamá loves me” (mi mamá me ama), Grande decided to “rearrange the words so that they formed a question: ¿Me ama mi mamá? Does my mama love me?”
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6177-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
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