An inspirational story with a happy ending (hopefully permanent).
In her debut memoir, jockey Harris tells how she beat the odds to become the “first African American woman in Chicago racing history to win a race and only the second in U.S. history.
By 1999, when the author was 32, her life had spun out of control. Her son was in foster care, and she couldn't afford medical treatment to control her bipolar disorder. Working at odd jobs and living in a car, she had hit rock bottom. After a relatively privileged childhood in California, she suffered her first manic attack as a teenager and was briefly hospitalized. Her life began a downward spiral with recurring episodes, and she entered a common-law marriage with a would-be musician that ended with him having custody of their two children. A short fling with a Hollywood casting director left her with a third child. After years of drifting—with her father taking custody of her son—she found work on a horse farm in Orlando and began her recovery. In a Hollywood film, the story would end with a fade-out of her triumphant comeback in 2007, when—now a 40-year-old apprentice jockey—she and the beaten-down horse she was riding won a prestigious race. In real life, however, there was no such fairy-tale happy ending. She had overcome many obstacles, but racism and prejudice against a woman trying to enter a traditionally male field still made it difficult for her to find horses to jockey. Offered a horse with an injured shoulder, she accepted, only to be thrown on the ground and seriously injured. By 2009, she was again homeless and in the grips of mental illness as she struggled to remain in the racing game. Fortunately, she moved to Wilmington and found work at the Delaware Park race track, which sponsored a mental-health program. There, she has received effective medication and is participating in group therapy.
An inspirational story with a happy ending (hopefully permanent).Pub Date: March 8, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-171444-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 29, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2011
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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