With the help of sportswriter Ryan (Little Girls in Pretty Boxes, 1995), the three-time National Coach of the Year and coach of the gold-medal-winning 1996 Olympic women's basketball team tells all. Perhaps as well known for her sober behavior and dress as for her coaching success, VanDerveer displays a side here—warm, determined, unabashedly flawed, and unselfconsciously upbeat—that should surprise those who have not followed her career since the beginning. VanDerveer relives the inequities that defined her playing career in the days prior to and just following the inception of Title IX; the grudging acceptance of the letter, rather than the spirit, of that law; and the none-too-subtle gender discrimination that still taints most sports. (After arriving in Atlanta for the Olympics, members of VanDerveer's team were told that they would receive just half the meal money of their male counterparts). Rather than catalog these setbacks and inequities, VanDerveer instead explains how her own doggedness and will to succeed helped her rise. The coach repeatedly (if unintentionally) demonstrates how her seldom-heralded ability to adapt enabled her to continually challenge and inspire Team USA—which compiled a 60-0 record en route to the gold medal. Since the games, VanDerveer has returned to Stanford, turning aside lucrative offers to coach in one of the two competing pro women's leagues. (During the off- season, she does television commentary on the WNBA.) However, judging from the impact she's had on her players' lives, VanDerveer has succeeded in making women stop listening to reasons why they can't or shouldn't play and start thinking about how they can be better players. (8 pages photos, not seen) (First printing of 60,000; author tour)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-380-97588-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1997
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
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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