A smoothly written memoir steeped in positive reinforcement and hope for the future.
The uplifting story of a convict who beat a life prison sentence through education and dedication.
Entrepreneur Wilson was just a teenager when he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Though a passion for books buoyed his early adolescence in 1990s Washington, D.C., they remained dark days suffused with random thefts and the violent deaths of young friends. When his hardworking mother became embroiled in a severely abusive relationship with a corrupt policeman, the situation forced an angry, embittered Wilson to arm himself and plummet deeper into a life of crime. During an altercation, the author fired a series of panicked shots, killing a man; he was later convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment in Maryland at age 17, hopeless and shunned by his family. “I was young; I was black; I had a record seventeen pages long,” he writes. Wilson candidly shares the eye-opening details of his time in prison with a prose style that moves with directness and refreshingly unfettered honesty. Wilson seamlessly moves from his most downtrodden moments sealed away in prison to the motivational moments when he connected and shared ideas with a fellow lifer, earned his GED and college degrees, and learned multiple languages. Despite years devoted to his education and self-improvement initiatives, numerous courtroom appeals for leniency were denied until, finally, his chance at a new life was granted with a sentence reduction and parole. All of these events, both promising and discouraging, fueled Wilson’s lofty “master plan” and an entrepreneurial spirit that inspired him to cultivate a socially responsible business venture, Barclay Investment Corporation, which matches unemployed Baltimore area residents with clients who have service needs. The author’s passionately written memoir, infused with all the frustrations of making mistakes and seeking atonement, will give hope to readers who find themselves involved, to any degree, with the long road from incarceration to freedom.
A smoothly written memoir steeped in positive reinforcement and hope for the future.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7352-1558-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
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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