by Wyclef Jean with Anthony Bozza ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 18, 2012
Slick, unwieldy overview of Jean’s stardom and humanitarian ambitions.
Reflective memoir from a breakout hip-hop star of the 1990s, served with a generous helping of braggadocio.
Jean, who co-authored this book with prolific celebrity biographer Bozza (Why AC/DC Matters, 2009, etc.), has been in the public eye recently for his controversial efforts on behalf of his native Haiti, including an abortive run for the presidency. The narrative opens dramatically, with Jean’s initial trip home after the devastating 2010 earthquake (“I had to help any way I could, not as Wyclef Jean, but as a Haitian”). Jean then looks back at his improbable journey from rural childhood to genre-defining triumph with the Fugees. As an adolescent, Jean left Haiti for New Jersey, where his strict father established himself as a fiery Nazarene preacher who regarded hip-hop as “bum music.” Yet Jean’s passion for musical expression developed early; he played in the church band to please his father, while making connections in the rapidly expanding universe of East Coast rap. By his early 20s, he’d joined fellow Haitian Pras Michel and two young women, forming the group that eventually became the Fugees. The author’s greatest strength is his nostalgic discussion of the music scene of the ’90s, when any success seemed possible, and his focus on the nitty-gritty of artistic development, as the Fugees moved from their run-down basement studio to sold-out stadium tours and platinum records. On the whole, though, the narrative is strangely paced: Jean intersperses humorous, self-deprecating anecdotes with repetitive storytelling and frequent assertions of his many accomplishments. The author awkwardly discusses the Fugees’ dissolution at the height of success. Jean acknowledges his long extramarital affair with Lauryn Hill but seems to regard its destructive reverberations (including her virtual disappearance from the music industry) as inevitable, the product of their passion and artistry.
Slick, unwieldy overview of Jean’s stardom and humanitarian ambitions.Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-196686-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: It Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 8, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 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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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...
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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