A cautionary tale with a happy ending that is far from the norm; only societal overhaul, Woods suggests, can effect mass...
Biting autobiography of a young black man who despised his middle-class upbringing and turned to crime in a futile effort to break free, but ultimately came to terms with his self-destructive behavior.
At age three, the author had already set a pattern that would haunt his life: “I refused to follow rules; it had to be my way or no way.” His father was a well-paid executive, and the family lived in a tony Chicago suburb, but Woods was confrontational and defensive. His memoir stingingly conveys the grief and madness he felt as a black child in an all-white environment. As his horizon began to encompass a broader black experience, his parents were unyielding; he was put into a foster home, then a mental institution when he could no longer be controlled. Admittedly lazy, Woods started to look for fast money, and by the time he was a sophomore in high school, he was committing armed crimes. “On the day of my high school graduation, I was planning a bank robbery,” he writes. The outlaw life appealed, but Woods was green and stupid; he ended up in various jails, where all he learned was how to be a more effective criminal. Yet he also sensed something that set him apart from his cellmates: they were desperate; he was an adventurer. During his second prison stretch, Woods’s thoughts turned to the nature of black crime, the intents and purposes of prisons and the criminal-justice system. Jail was simply a breeding ground to sharpen the lawless mindset, he realized, and he had managed to turn off his conscience. He decided to turn it back on, but what flicks that switch of conscience, Woods reports, is elusive. He doesn’t necessarily see much hope for black men in a society of institutionalized racism.
A cautionary tale with a happy ending that is far from the norm; only societal overhaul, Woods suggests, can effect mass rehabilitation.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-7434-7738-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2003
Riveting and exquisitely crafted.
Musician, poet and visual artist Smith (Trois, 2008, etc.) chronicles her intense life with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe during the 1960s and ’70s, when both artists came of age in downtown New York.
Both born in 1946, Smith and Mapplethorpe would become widely celebrated—she for merging poetry with rock ’n’ roll in her punk-rock performances, he as the photographer who brought pornography into the realm of art. Upon meeting in the summer of 1967, they were hungry, lonely and gifted youths struggling to find their way and their art. Smith, a gangly loser and college dropout, had attended Bible school in New Jersey where she took solace in the poetry of Rimbaud. Mapplethorpe, a former altar boy turned LSD user, had grown up in middle-class Long Island. Writing with wonderful immediacy, Smith tells the affecting story of their entwined young lives as lovers, friends and muses to one another. Eating day-old bread and stew in dumpy East Village apartments, they forged fierce bonds as soul mates who were at their happiest when working together. To make money Smith clerked in bookstores, and Mapplethorpe hustled on 42nd Street. The author colorfully evokes their days at the shabbily elegant Hotel Chelsea, late nights at Max’s Kansas City and their growth and early celebrity as artists, with Smith winning initial serious attention at a St. Mark’s Poetry Project reading and Mapplethorpe attracting lovers and patrons who catapulted him into the arms of high society. The book abounds with stories about friends, including Allen Ginsberg, Janis Joplin, William Burroughs, Sam Shepard, Gregory Corso and other luminaries, and it reveals Smith’s affection for the city—the “gritty innocence” of the couple’s beloved Coney Island, the “open atmosphere” and “simple freedom” of Washington Square. Despite separations, the duo remained friends until Mapplethorpe’s death in 1989. “Nobody sees as we do, Patti,” he once told her.
Riveting and exquisitely crafted.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-621131-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
For the author’s fans.
A Fox News journalist and talk show host sets out to prove that she is not “an empty St. John suit in five-inch stiletto heels.”
The child of devout Christians, Minnesota native Carlson’s first love was music. She began playing violin at age 6 and quickly revealed that she was not only a prodigy, but also a little girl who thrived on pleasing audiences. Working with top teachers, she developed her art over the years. But by 16, Carlson began “chafing at [the] rigid, structured life” of a concert violinist–in-training and temporarily put music aside. At the urging of her mother, the high achiever set her sights on winning the Miss T.E.E.N. pageant, where she was first runner-up. College life at Stanford became yet another quest for perfection that led Carlson to admit it was “not attainable” after she earned a C in one class. At the end of her junior year and again at the urging of her mother, Carlson entered the 1989 Miss America pageant, which she would go on to win thanks to a brilliant violin performance. Dubbed the “smart Miss America,” Carlson struggled with pageant stereotypes as well as public perceptions of who she was. Being in the media spotlight every day during her reign, however, also helped her decide on a career in broadcast journalism. Yet success did not come easily. Sexual harassment dogged her, and many expressed skepticism about her abilities due to her pageant past. Even after she rose to national prominence, first as a CBS news broadcaster and then as a Fox talk show host, Carlson continued—and continues—to be labeled as “dumb or a bimbo.” Her history clearly demonstrates that she is neither. However, Carlson’s overly earnest tone, combined with her desire to show her Minnesota “niceness…in action,” as well as the existence of “abundant brain cells,” dampens the book’s impact.
For the author’s fans.Pub Date: June 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-525-42745-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
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