The disturbing account of real-life physical and sexual child abuse and its long-lasting effects.
Escaping into a world of fiction often provides a welcome diversion: the forces of good triumphing over evil and an ending that pleasantly satisfies. This book will not leave you with that feeling. The brutal account includes graphic descriptions of child abuse, both sexual and physical, and is not for the faint of heart. Instead of supernatural or larger-than-life “bad guys,” the demons who haunt the story of Fulks’ childhood are all too real. To her credit, Fulks weaves a compelling narrative with commanding prose and unforgivingly detailed descriptions of truly horrifying experiences. As she moves past her childhood, she intensely describes how her experiences colored even the ordinary aspects of her life, from dating to marriage and even having children. Although there are a few bright spots in her story, the overall tone is indisputably bleak; readers won’t come away believing in the power of positivity. But for being so concerned with issues as serious as those raised here, the narrative maintains a refreshing outlook: Without sugarcoating the problems, Fulks trusts the reader enough to lay everything out on the table, no matter how gruesome or shocking. The horrors described are truly harrowing, but if readers can make it through, they’ll likely come away changed and perhaps with a sharper perspective on the terrible long-term effects of child abuse. The reality might just be too real.
A detailed, deftly told narrative that will shock even the stoutest readers.Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2012
ISBN: 978-1477646557
Page Count: 434
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS
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Sedaris remains stubbornly irreverent even in the face of pandemic lockdowns and social upheaval.
In his previous collection of original essays, Calypso (2018), the author was unusually downbeat, fixated on aging and the deaths of his mother and sister. There’s bad news in this book, too—most notably, the death of his problematic and seemingly indestructible father at 96—but Sedaris generally carries himself more lightly. On a trip to a gun range, he’s puzzled by boxer shorts with a holster feature, which he wishes were called “gunderpants.” He plays along with nursing-home staffers who, hearing a funnyman named David is on the premises, think he’s Dave Chappelle. He’s bemused by his sister Amy’s landing a new apartment to escape her territorial pet rabbit. On tour, he collects sheaves of off-color jokes and tales of sexual self-gratification gone wrong. His relationship with his partner, Hugh, remains contentious, but it’s mellowing. (“After thirty years, sleeping is the new having sex.”) Even more serious stuff rolls off him. Of Covid-19, he writes that “more than eight hundred thousand people have died to date, and I didn’t get to choose a one of them.” The author’s support of Black Lives Matter is tempered by his interest in the earnest conscientiousness of organizers ensuring everyone is fed and hydrated. (He refers to one such person as a “snacktivist.”) Such impolitic material, though, puts serious essays in sharper, more powerful relief. He recalls fending off the flirtations of a 12-year-old boy in France, frustrated by the language barrier and other factors that kept him from supporting a young gay man. His father’s death unlocks a crushing piece about dad’s inappropriate, sexualizing treatment of his children. For years—chronicled in many books—Sedaris labored to elude his father’s criticism. Even in death, though, it proves hard to escape or laugh off.
A sweet-and-sour set of pieces on loss, absurdity, and places they intersect.Pub Date: May 31, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-316-39245-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2022
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A concise personal and scholarly history that avoids academic jargon as it illuminates emotional truths.
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The Harvard historian and Texas native demonstrates what the holiday means to her and to the rest of the nation.
Initially celebrated primarily by Black Texans, Juneteenth refers to June 19, 1865, when a Union general arrived in Galveston to proclaim the end of slavery with the defeat of the Confederacy. If only history were that simple. In her latest, Gordon-Reed, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and numerous other honors, describes how Whites raged and committed violence against celebratory Blacks as racism in Texas and across the country continued to spread through segregation, Jim Crow laws, and separate-but-equal rationalizations. As Gordon-Reed amply shows in this smooth combination of memoir, essay, and history, such racism is by no means a thing of the past, even as Juneteenth has come to be celebrated by all of Texas and throughout the U.S. The Galveston announcement, notes the author, came well after the Emancipation Proclamation but before the ratification of the 13th Amendment. Though Gordon-Reed writes fondly of her native state, especially the strong familial ties and sense of community, she acknowledges her challenges as a woman of color in a state where “the image of Texas has a gender and a race: “Texas is a White man.” The author astutely explores “what that means for everyone who lives in Texas and is not a White man.” With all of its diversity and geographic expanse, Texas also has a singular history—as part of Mexico, as its own republic from 1836 to 1846, and as a place that “has connections to people of African descent that go back centuries.” All of this provides context for the uniqueness of this historical moment, which Gordon-Reed explores with her characteristic rigor and insight.
A concise personal and scholarly history that avoids academic jargon as it illuminates emotional truths.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63149-883-1
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
Categories: HISTORICAL & MILITARY | AFRICAN AMERICAN | HISTORY | UNITED STATES | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS
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