A chilling account of reporters in danger that heightens awareness of the importance of a free press.
A journalist’s memoir of training reporters during a dangerous time in Rwanda.
Sundaram (Stringer: A Reporter’s Journey in the Congo, 2014), who previously received a Reuters journalism award for his reporting from Congo, “had come to Rwanda to teach journalists how to identify, research and write news stories.” The program, funded by the United Kingdom and the European Union and approved by the Rwandan government, was mandated to report “mostly on government initiatives.” Under the leadership of President Paul Kagame, the country had been praised for its progress since the 1994 genocide, but Sundaram was learning from his students the perils of veering from the “official” good news. He heard stories of journalists who were harassed, beaten, or thrown into jail after criticizing the government or merely reporting existing problems such as poverty. The country’s popular independent newspaper, Umuseso, was shut down. Another editor/reporter was hounded and on the run after he started a magazine with a story about malnutrition. With unfettered power came absurdities. The government ordered villages to tear off their thatched roofs because they were primitive. A local pastor was arrested after telling villagers to “stop destroying their huts until the government built them replacements.” While people were getting sick from living outside, flowers became “obligatory in the workplace.” In spots, the book reads like a thriller, but the writing, more descriptive than crisp, doesn't sustain the tautness. Sundaram’s talents show in his creation of an atmosphere of paranoia and dread. In this setting, the author began to wonder whom he could trust. An appendix provides a listing of reporters who were fired from their jobs, forced to leave the country, beaten, jailed, or killed. In this climate, it became nearly impossible to find journalists for his program, which eventually shut down.
A chilling account of reporters in danger that heightens awareness of the importance of a free press.Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-385-53956-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015
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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