A slowly unfolding, moving journey of turning beliefs into actions.
A chronicle of the humanitarian efforts by a Ugandan native schooled in the West, addressing poverty and the ravages of AIDS in Africa.
Kaguri, now a university administrator at Michigan State University, was one of the lucky ones growing up in the impoverished rural village of Nyakagyezi, where his father owned a banana plantation. By 1991, while the author was pursuing his studies in Kampala and planning to attend Columbia University, 15 percent of Ugandan adults suffered from AIDS (known in the country as “slim”), as well as nearly 30 percent of pregnant women in cities, which left small children like many of his own relatives without parents. When Kaguri brought his American bride to his village in 2001, the two decided it was time to help some of the two million orphans by starting a primary school where they would receive a free education, books, uniforms, meals and health care. While his father, Taata, refused to offer land or help (he believed Kaguri was a “disobedient son”), he eventually became one of the school’s most enthusiastic supporters. With money donated by American church groups and grants, the Nyaka AIDS Orphans School opened Jan. 2, 2003, with its first 67 students. Much of the book focuses on the struggle to find sustainable funding for the school, and meetings and interviews are drawn out for dramatic effect. The author alternates the main narrative with flashbacks of his youth, providing a snapshot of the daily lives of the Ugandan villagers. Poignant moments include interviews between Kaguri, the school director and young students overwhelmed at the chance to be freed of the drudgery of daily chores and attend school, and heartbreaking scenes in which students die of AIDS.
A slowly unfolding, moving journey of turning beliefs into actions.Pub Date: June 14, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-670-02184-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2010
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
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