A passionate plea for help from a desperate woman who stands behind her pledge of innocence.
The unbelievable but true story of how a difference in religions could cost a woman her life.
Being a Christian in the predominately Muslim country of Pakistan is never easy, but taking a drink of water on a hot day from a local well should be a simple act. For Bibi, it was, until her Muslim neighbors saw her use the community cup. Suddenly, with this innocent deed, Bibi's life turned into a nightmare. As one woman said, "Listen, all of you, this Christian has dirtied the water in the well by drinking from our cup and dipping it back in several times.” Told simply and honestly, with the help of French journalist Tollet, Bibi describes the incredible turn of events that landed her in prison, awaiting her execution. She describes the horrible prison conditions, including the lack of toilet facilities and water to clean herself, the insufficient blankets during the cold months and the overwhelming fear that surrounds her as she lingers in her cell. She is unable to see her young children and only sees her husband infrequently; the family has had to go into hiding because of the outrage caused by her actions. She is surrounded by other women who have been imprisoned for adultery, "but in reality many of them have been raped. Although these women are victims, they're regarded as guilty." The governor who supported Bibi's innocence was murdered, and Bibi was moved into solitary confinement for her own protection, her every move monitored by cameras placed in the ceiling. Her story is emotional and moving and a cry for help as she still sits and waits for her sentence to be carried out.
A passionate plea for help from a desperate woman who stands behind her pledge of innocence.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-61374-889-3
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 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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