An intriguing read about a mysterious religion.
Scorah, an editor at Scholastic, debuts with the story of her life in, and after, the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Having been born into the church, the author went on to become one of its missionaries to China; the most fascinating portions of her memoir describe her years in Shanghai. Scorah paints the picture of an innocent and unquestioning young girl who grew up to be a more independent, yet socially impaired, adult. Following a protracted teenage tryst that caused her to be ostracized from the church for a time, she married a man she did not love and found escape and meaning as a missionary, reaching out to whomever she could find to teach Jehovah’s Witness doctrine. The author is adept in her portrayals of the conflict in cultures she discovered in China and in relaying the challenges she faced as a Westerner trying to convert people in a foreign country. A lengthy online affair with a man who became driven to prove her religion wrong led Scorah to have doubts and eventually begin the process of leaving her husband and then the church—and thus most everything she had ever known. The author eventually found new work and friendships in Shanghai, and she later relocated to New York. Her work is well-written, and only occasionally does the author delve too heavy-handedly into salacious tell-all territory. Mostly, she provides an eye-opening account of how Jehovah’s Witnesses live and operate. Sadly, the tale lacks a happy ending, as the author would lose her 4-month-old son. “When I arrived at lunch [at daycare] to nurse him, he was dead,” she writes in the heartbreaking final section. “No one could tell me why, or what had happened.” The narrative ends on a note of near-despair, with only a glimmer of hope. “I have called a truce with the unknown,” writes Scorah, “and I am learning to live with the disquiet.”
An intriguing read about a mysterious religion.Pub Date: June 4, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7352-2254-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
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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