Uplifting and inspirational, particularly for those interested in international development.
The story of American development worker Molly Melching's founding and expansion of Tostan, an NGO focused on bringing awareness of human rights and a sense of empowerment to people living in remote African villages.
Melching’s transformation from Midwestern college graduate to thrill-seeking international crusader makes for compelling reading. After arriving in Senegal in 1974 for what was supposed to be a six-month student-exchange program at the University of Dakar, Melching decided to live and work there permanently. She spent years working as a Peace Corps volunteer, translator and children's book author. In 1991, she founded Tostan, which has become a highly respected organization with an astonishing record of success. Most famous among Tostan's myriad accomplishments is the work that has led nearly 5,000 Senegalese village councils to declare that they are abandoning the centuries-old practice of female genital mutilation, a painful ritual that can lead to severe health problems and even death. Molloy (co-author: Jantsen's Gift: A True Story of Grief, Rescue, and Grace, 2009, etc.) has a reporter's knack for selecting and arranging the most salient details of Melching's experiences, and the resulting story is moving and memorable. In keeping with Tostan's focus on empowering Africans to drive change within their own communities, Molloy writes almost as much about Melching's courageous African mentors and colleagues as she does about Melching. The book's only serious flaw is Molloy's zeal for her subject. Although it’s obvious that Melching is brilliant, hardworking, compassionate, humble and brave, some readers may long for at least a glimpse of a flaw. Molloy mentions that Melching has erred in both her professional and personal lives, but her mistakes are never as vividly drawn as her triumphs, and readers are left with the impression that she is more saint than human.
Uplifting and inspirational, particularly for those interested in international development.Pub Date: April 30, 2013
ISBN: 978-0062132765
Page Count: 208
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2013
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
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
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