A courageous and necessary memoir in troubling times.
A Muslim physician details his unexpected transformation from a rural family doctor into an ambassador for cultural tolerance.
In 2013, Virji left a well-paying position at a Pennsylvania hospital to practice a “dignified medicine” that treated patients as whole people rather than walking ailments. Seeking a better life and a way to redress the doctor shortage in rural America, he relocated to Dawson, Minnesota, a town of less than 1,500 residents. He and his family were the only Muslims, yet they acclimated quickly. Better still, Virji’s career as the well-respected chief of staff, bariatric clinic director, and CEO of his own weight loss business blossomed: “life in every sense [was] good.” The first sign of trouble appeared in 2016 when then–presidential candidate Donald Trump began to “[spew] hatred toward Muslims” in his campaign speeches. Though life in Dawson seemed unaffected by national events, everything changed after Trump won the election. Now seen as a terrorist threat, the author contemplated moving to Dubai only to realize that he did not want to be driven from the home that he and his family had come to love. Then a local pastor approached him to work on an interfaith project that aimed to dispel misconceptions about Islam among the mostly Christian members of the Dawson community. Although he believed that faith was a private matter, Virji made the task a personal jihad, or struggle. His message of tolerance struck a deep chord in Dawson as well as the other Minnesota communities where he was invited to speak. Yet his impact was constantly thwarted by rival lecturers espousing racist, anti-Muslim doctrines that tested the author’s commitment to both the life he had chosen and the spirit of brotherly love he defended. Both candid and compelling, Virji’s book is strong medicine for an age plagued by the ills of xenophobia, misinformation, and distrust.
A courageous and necessary memoir in troubling times.Pub Date: June 11, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-57720-1
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Convergent
Review Posted Online: March 24, 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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