A striking memoir that’s full of advice, inspiration, and positivity.
A Jamaican immigrant from a poor, rural background becomes a successful entrepreneur in New York City in this memoir.
HoSang’s debut (with co-author Lee) starts with his humble beginning, when he was born in 1940 in Springfield, Jamaica—a town with no electricity, running water, or paved roads. He was one of 10 children in an immigrant Chinese family, and constant poverty forced his family members to take jobs all over the island; he eventually apprenticed in his uncle’s small grocery. He would later take the lessons that he learned there about supply, demand, and location to the land of opportunity itself—New York, where he toiled as a milkman and factory worker, saving every penny. Opportunity eventually came in the form of a comfort food from his homeland: the Jamaican patty, a flaky turnover filled with beef, chicken, and/or vegetables, which would become the backbone of his food-production business, Caribbean Food Delights. HoSang slowly grew his company, as well as his family, persevering despite crises involving con men, inspectors, strikers, and debtors. All the while, he was spurred on by his desire to put distance between himself and his impoverished origins. HoSang’s memoir effectively portrays a life lived entirely through the lens of enterprise, and it’s full of advice that rejects the cynical shrewdness of typical business guides. Rather, this book is as upbeat as its author, never allowing itself to wallow in failure or self-pity and always emphasizing the importance of faith, focus, and constant hard work. In particular, it stresses the importance of the company that one keeps, as HoSang credits much of his own success to surrounding himself with people whom he trusted and admired. The book also includes firsthand testimonials from many of the key figures in his life, including teachers, partners, friends, and family members.
A striking memoir that’s full of advice, inspiration, and positivity.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9974961-0-9
Page Count: 322
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: April 25, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
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.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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