Barker’s story shines an important light on the subject of sexual harassment in the workplace while exposing the shoddy...
In 2004, seeking greater financial security for her family, military wife and mother Barker secured a one-year assignment working for Halliburton/KBR in Iraq. Her memoir chronicles her sexual abuse, the military contractor’s attempted coverup and her prolonged battle for justice.
The author’s orientation in Houston did not go well. She felt the atmosphere was unprofessional, as medical exams were given in a shoddy, substandard building, and prospective employees’ meals were of poor quality. Nonetheless, Barker gave Halliburton the benefit of the doubt and traveled to Iraq. The author felt unprepared for the dangerous environment she encountered. Security was lax, drugs and alcohol, though banned at the camp, were rampant, and a chaotic atmosphere reigned. “I often wondered what the hardworking American people would think if they knew they were paying for such complete incompetence,” she writes. When Barker lodged a complaint against her supervisor, her situation deteriorated quickly. She was held in a shipping container for three days and told she would lose her job if she attempted to leave. After a co-worker raped her, Barker was abandoned in the desert. Upon her return to the States, she sought counseling and hired a team of attorneys. Her struggle for justice became as harrowing as her experiences in Iraq. Barker’s attorneys purposefully misled her, creating stressful and expensive delays. “Like most people,” she writes, “before the experiences described in this book, I wholeheartedly believed in America, and blindly trusted our judicial system. Then, the system egregiously failed my family, my fellow citizens, and me.” The author’s story is interspersed with comments from her husband regarding his wife’s nightmarish situation, the tensions created within the family and his thoughts concerning the legal malfeasance the couple encountered.
Barker’s story shines an important light on the subject of sexual harassment in the workplace while exposing the shoddy ethical standards and procedures of Halliburton/KBR.Pub Date: April 8, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-60980-547-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Seven Stories
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2014
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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