A courageous and often inspiring remembrance, despite a few flaws in its execution.
A Sri Lankan immigrant to Canada describes growing up with impaired vision in this memoir.
Nanayakkara, the author of Cardboard Dreams (2015), was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka (then known as Ceylon), in the mid 1960s. Soon after, the family relocated to Canada and were among the first Sri Lankan immigrants to settle in Newfoundland. The author was acutely aware of her poor vision from an early age, but was expected to keep up with the fully sighted students at school. She suffered from fatigue and eyestrain due to her disability, but despite her hard work, insensitive teachers often referred to as “lazy” on report cards. She begged her parents to send her to a school for the blind, but they refused, as her mother, a teacher, believed that it would bring shame on her. Nanayakkara describes having to use a large-print reader in class and how it made her feel separate from her classmates. She relates an account of a lonely childhood in which she was bullied, not only because of her difficulty seeing, but also because she was Asian. Her family’s search to find a doctor who could help improve her sight met with disappointment. As a result, her family limited her freedom, but as she grew older, she pushed for independence. She eventually attended Memorial University of Newfoundland as a history major and had dreams of becoming a writer. This frank, illuminating memoir becomes a story of personal determination as she tells of how her professional life and love life took shape in her early 20s, after years of struggling for acceptance.
Nanayakkara’s writing is richly descriptive as she paints a vivid portrait of herself as a child, and of how she felt about herself: “my short black curly hair, thick coke bottle glasses that I refused to wear when I wasn’t reading…and my lack of academic smarts.” The author is unafraid to return to painful moments in her youth in order to highlight the absurdity of racism. The work is bold but lacks a sense of bitterness, even as it demonstrates how her parents’, teachers’, and peers’ lack of understanding of her disability led to her overwhelming sense of isolation. On occasion, the author resorts to clipped sentences that seem out of harmony with her descriptive style: “The optimism I had experienced at the end of 1981 did not carry into the new year. The broadcasting class I had enjoyed so much in the fall was to be shelved.” The memoir also ends abruptly with little pause for overall reflection, although it does leave a suggestion that further volumes may follow. However, these are minor criticisms and detract little from a book that captures the emotions of a young, disabled immigrant fighting to gain a sense of belonging in society. This book will be of particular interest to other Sri Lankan immigrants to Canada, but will also strike a chord with a wide range of readers who’ve felt excluded for their differences.
A courageous and often inspiring remembrance, despite a few flaws in its execution.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Manuscript
Review Posted Online: Aug. 5, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood.
In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. While McCurdy didn’t emerge from her childhood unscathed, she’s managed to spin her harrowing experience into a sold-out stage act and achieve a form of catharsis that puts her mind, body, and acting career at peace.
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982185-82-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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