A resonant posthumous collection of pieces—most of which have never before appeared in print—from a distinguished black woman writer. Bambara, author of the critically acclaimed short-story collection Gorilla, My Love (not reviewed) and the novel The Salteaters (1980), died last year from cancer at the age of 56. This collection includes six short stories and several essays, as well as an interview with Bambara, conducted by her friend Louis Massiah. The latter, titled ``How She Came By Her Name,'' is a wonderful exploration of Bambara's personal history, identity, and values, as well as her thoughts about her four most profound commitments: community activism, writing, motherhood, and film. Several essays discuss the history of black independent film and its importance to black cultural autonomy and expression; in the 1980s she came to prefer film over fiction and spent much of her time writing scripts, as well as editing, analyzing, and teaching film. She is also profoundly moving on the subject of her Harlem girlhood; she refers repeatedly to her memories of the neighborhood's legendary Speaker's Corner in the 1930s as a model for community discourse—and celebrates as well Harlem's bookstores, movie houses, and libraries. Sometimes these pieces tend toward the pedantic or polemical, becoming labored in a way that her fiction never is. Indeed, the fiction here is masterful- -alive with powerful women, animated by rage at racial injustice, narrated in a compressed, powerful prose that is rich, varied, but always precise. In the preface to this collection, Toni Morrison, Bambara's longtime editor and friend, writes that ``I don't know if she knew the heart cling of her fiction.'' Whether she did or not, with the release of Deep Sightings, many readers will.
Pub Date: Nov. 27, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-44250-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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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