Jail, deportation, world championship, even a green card: the trajectory of this convict-turned-gentleman can only be...
As if being a professional boxer weren’t hard enough, add the day-to-day worry of being an illegal immigrant and the stigma of being an ex-con.
For Jesus Chavez, born Gabriel Sandoval, life never was a beach. His family came north from Mexico, without the requisite paperwork, and fetched up in Chicago. They were a tight unit, long on values and the work ethic. Gabriel was respectful and a good student, but drawn to the solidarity of gang life. He took part in a robbery and, despite being a youthful first offender, pulled a seven-year sentence. He wouldn’t back away from a fight in jail and spent two years in maximum security. Upon release, he was deported to Mexico. Illegally immigrating again, Gabriel avoided the temptations of Chicago gangs by moving to Austin, Texas. Gravity and fate drew him to a local gym, and a boxer was born. Soon he was rechristened Jesus Chavez, to obscure his identity. Time contributor Pitluk never overplays his narrative hand in telling Sandoval/Chavez’s story. He smoothly charts his subject’s wild, moving ride from jail to youth counselor to multiple world champion in the featherweight, super-feather and lightweight classes. The second half of the book describes Chavez’s work in the ring and the harsh world of boxing. Even as world champion, he had to fight when injured or risk losing his standing. When he did lose, Pitluk draws it in all its unloveliness: one fighter “landed 284 punches all over Chavez’s head.” He battles on, enormously dedicated and charismatic, regaining a title at the expense of his opponent’s life in 2005.
Jail, deportation, world championship, even a green card: the trajectory of this convict-turned-gentleman can only be marveled upon, and Pitluk’s account does Chavez proud.Pub Date: May 30, 2006
ISBN: 0-306-81454-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Da Capo
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
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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