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ERA OF IGNITION

Name: ERA OF IGNITION
Author: Amber Tamblyn
ISBN: 978-1-984822-98-7

COMING OF AGE IN A TIME OF RAGE AND REVOLUTION

by Amber Tamblyn ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 5, 2019

A personal and passionate story about making a world “that is nourished, healed, and flourishing.”

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The actor and director candidly discusses her turbulent personal evolution within a changing American society.

For Tamblyn (Any Man, 2018, etc.), America’s current “existential crisis and…questioning of its own values and future” is a manifestation of a new social awareness, especially where gender inequities are concerned. Drawing from her experiences in an industry infamous for its racism, sexism, and misogyny, the author traces the “ignition” of her own feminist consciousness. In 2008, the then-25-year-old author dreamed of creating a film version of the Janet Fitch novel Paint It Black. But in an industry that routinely snubbed the efforts of female directors, Tamblyn did not know how she could transform her dream into reality. The same year, she campaigned for presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, whose efforts symbolized the ongoing female battle to break through the glass ceilings of power. In the difficult, rejection-filled years that followed, Tamblyn forged ahead with the attitude that if the mostly male creative decision-makers in Hollywood would not allow her to get a foot in the door, then she would “build my own goddamn house.” The author eventually succeeded in making a generally well-reviewed film and distributing it through a small woman-owned company. Just as Tamblyn began to feel empowered for her achievements, she witnessed Clinton’s second defeat, this time to a man who exemplified the toxic masculinity she spent so many years fighting against. In the aftermath, Tamblyn, now a mother to an infant daughter, became keenly aware of the impact misogyny had on the female body and mind, including her own, which suffered from lingering postpartum inflammation. She questioned her own privilege as a white female, embraced intersectional feminism, and co-founded Time’s Up, a movement dedicated to helping women “be heard and acknowledged in male-dominated workplaces.” Though prone to digression and occasional political overzealousness, the book offers illuminating insights into the changing face of feminism and the continued struggle to overcome the hardening lines of gender injustice.

A personal and passionate story about making a world “that is nourished, healed, and flourishing.”

Pub Date: March 5, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-984822-98-7

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Crown Archetype

Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019

Categories:

- BOOK REVIEW
LISTENING IN THE DARK
by Amber Tamblyn

- BOOK REVIEW
FREE STALLION
by Amber Tamblyn

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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NIGHT

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

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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.

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.