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JOCKEY DAUGHTER

Name: JOCKEY DAUGHTER
Author: Tracey Cooper
ISBN: 978-1-5320-0440-7

I DO NOT HAVE TO BE BEATEN TO CROSS THE FINISH LINE

by Tracey Cooper ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 7, 2016

Readers may want more explanations, but even the gaps in this well-written, engrossing book about an abusive mother are...

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This debut memoir offers a glimpse into the world of horse racing and a detailed account of abuse.

Cooper grew up in suburban Maryland through the 1960s and ’70s. With six siblings, her family, particularly her mother, was very active in the community and the Roman Catholic Church. Her father was a well-known jockey; other jockeys and trainers often visited their home and Cooper’s family often traveled to attend races. On the outside, the family seemed vibrant, successful, and caring. But most of Cooper’s story occurs inside the house where her mother regularly abused all seven children, physically, verbally, and psychologically. From a young age, Cooper called her “our mother,” refusing to connect herself with this “tooth-clenching, red-faced, angry monster.” Her recollections of abuse are harrowing and infuriating. The children were beaten with a hairbrush or potato masher often because they didn’t clean the house to perfection. Cooper was beaten because her young brother fell down a hole in the woods. She was often beaten and peppered with obscenities for no apparent reason at all. Cooper asks whether readers need another book on abuse but her memoir offers more than “misery lit.” She shows how abuse from a parent is particularly insidious and damaging. Mostly, she and her siblings accepted their lot. Cooper is clear that she hated her mother and wished her dead. Yet she felt she could only fight back by leaving, which she did through marriage. Despite the title of the book, her father played a minor role and did not intervene. The author does not question this. Even as an adult with two children of her own, Cooper could not turn away her still abusive mother at Thanksgiving. And although she “often wondered” what caused her mother’s behavior, she doesn’t delve into family history or medical explanations. This reflects a time when mental illness was not discussed but it also, quite poignantly, reflects the inner turmoil of a child abused by a parent, the “battle with conflicting hatred…and longing for the nurturing aspect.”

Readers may want more explanations, but even the gaps in this well-written, engrossing book about an abusive mother are revealing.

Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-5320-0440-7

Page Count: 192

Publisher: iUniverse

Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2017

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)