The book’s erotic focus is a prolonged objectification of black women.
Graves recounts his efforts to address his racist upbringing and outlines his fascination with black culture.
“I am from a racist family” is the stark opening line of this tell-all about seeking sexual and professional fulfillment. Growing up in Memphis in the 1950s and 1960s, Graves (English/LeMoyne-Owen College; Aesop's Fables with Colin Hay, 2017, etc.) felt the notion of white superiority “was in the very air we breathed.” As a boy, he knew that black people lived in slums and had their own water fountains and exclusive days at the zoo. He didn’t get to know any black people, though, until his school integrated when he was 11. In the years to come, Graves was increasingly drawn to African American culture, researching the African origins of blues music. He also had sex with multiple black women, who appear to be racially fetishized (“a bevy of brown-skinned beauties”). After an unfulfilling 23-year marriage to a white woman, he writes, “I wanted to make up for what I considered lost time,” and “black women seemed to find me more attractive and interesting.” He met Fatima Magoro, from Sierra Leone, through Match.com. Despite his uneasiness over her inconsistent accounts of her past, he got her a fiancee visa for the U.S. Her existing pregnancy by another man nearly derailed the relationship, but after Fatima’s abortion they proceeded with a volatile relationship that lasted six years. The book’s sudden ending positions this experience as the pivotal one of the author’s life: “I will never know if she truly loved me,” he laments in conclusion. His experience of teaching seventh-grade creative writing makes for lively material, breaking up what can otherwise be a slightly dull chronological tour through the author’s life story. A classroom setting that initially appeared to be “the third circle of hell” gradually became a place where he had meaningful everyday encounters with minority students. Unfortunately, the overall effect here is a cataloging of black women's physical features that reads like racial stereotyping.
The book’s erotic focus is a prolonged objectification of black women.Pub Date: June 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-942531-31-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: DeVault-Graves Agency
Review Posted Online: June 6, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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