Part political essay, part open love letter to little girls growing up afraid to claim their identities, this fresh memoir...
The founder of Muslimgirl.com writes a searing memoir of her young life as a Muslim-American girl growing up in an era of Islamophobia.
Beginning with a wise warning about the dangers of using a “single story” to define a minority group, Al-Khatahtbeh takes readers on a memorable journey chronicling her development from childhood to womanhood. Al-Khatahtbeh was 9 years old when the twin towers fell. Both the national tragedy and the backlash against Muslims deeply affected her developing sense of identity. Growing up in New Jersey, spending her 13th year in her father’s native Jordan, donning the hijab upon returning to the United States, and post-college work experiences with media outlets culminated in her full-time focus on the necessary work of highlighting Muslim women’s voices. The development of her brainchild, the collaborative blog and media outlet muslimgirl.com, takes center stage in the second half of the book. Her work has inspired many, and now the story of how she arrived at it can inspire as well. The occasional lack of narrative flow barely detracts from the vital message this book brings to the national conversation. Al-Khatahtbeh’s perspective details the impact of our political climate on the identities of our youth and demonstrates the need for outlets like the one she founded.
Part political essay, part open love letter to little girls growing up afraid to claim their identities, this fresh memoir is an important read for Americans of all backgrounds.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5950-3
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 18, 2017
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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