A long-winded view of a fascinating game-changer.
A dense biography of Dr. Nafis Sadik, who changed the world for women through her work on population control.
Miller (Creative Writing/San Jose State Univ.; Desert Flower: The Extraordinary Journey of a Desert Nomad, 1998, etc.) researched Sadik for 10 years to give us this biographical view of the former undersecretary-general and executive director of the U.N. Population Fund. The book follows the improbable path of the Pakistani Sadik through partition, medical school, her early work in local population control and her efforts for the U.N. Population Fund, which she directed for 13 years. Sadik’s family “celebrated her femininity, valued her wishes, gave her the same educational opportunities as her brothers, then encouraged her career and independence.” She worked passionately against genital mutilation, obstetric fistula and childhood marriage. Through Sadik’s tenure at the U.N., the organization was “able to bring respectability to the concept of family planning.” She helped set the tone for controlling population growth by empowering women through education and ensuring basic human rights. The apex of Sadik’s career was the U.N.’s 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo. She outmaneuvered even the Vatican to support reproductive choice for women, brokering consensus for a 20-year plan to address world population and development. Miller intersperses each chapter about Sadik with vignettes of women she met while researching this book. These personal stories introduce us to victims of abuse, persecution, genital mutilation, prostitution and gang rape. The author also uses extensive quotes to bolster her story, but these passages lack concision—as do other parts of the book. Ultimately, it’s a thoroughly researched, inspiring story that runs more than 100 pages too long.
A long-winded view of a fascinating game-changer.Pub Date: March 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-8032-1104-9
Page Count: 524
Publisher: Univ. of Nebraska
Review Posted Online: Dec. 31, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
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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