Former Black Panther Party Chief-of-Staff Hilliard—responding to the 1989 death of his childhood friend and Panther founder Huey Newton—looks back at the Party and the world in which its members came of age. Growing up poor in racist Alabama, Hilliard—who, with the aid of Cole (Never Too Young to Die, 1988, etc.), writes his memoir in the present tense—absorbs the prevailing assumption that violence is the norm, but doesn't absorb his family's strong work ethic. Transplanted to Oakland, he becomes an alcohol-abusing teenage father who can't hold a job until the Panthers give him focus and stability. When Hilliard drunkenly shoots at a police car, Bobby Seale—soon to be bound and gagged in a Chicago courtroom, and later to be acquitted on Connecticut murder charges—confirms the author's faith in the Panthers by rebuking his undisciplined behavior. As told here, Hilliard always seems more anxious to learn to use words and ideas than weapons; nonetheless, he eventually spends four years in prison on charges stemming from a 1968 Oakland shooting. (Hilliard reports that, over his protests and on Eldridge Cleaver's orders, Panthers had been cruising in search of a cop to kill.) With little Party support during his trial—and with Newton's paranoia apparently exacerbated by FBI dirty tricks- -Hilliard was expelled from the Panthers while incarcerated. Throughout the text, his memories are supplemented by sometimes overly general reminiscences from black and white associates, and by excerpted FBI materials. Hilliard now advocates AA's 12 Steps, and here he makes a ``fearless moral inventory'' of his early life, his post-Party downward spiral, and Newton's crack addiction. But his account of his Party years, while a valuable document, is less probing—and no substitute for fellow Panther Elaine Brown's A Taste of Power (p. 1288). (Photos—16 pp. b&w—not seen.)
Pub Date: Feb. 2, 1993
ISBN: 0-316-36415-0
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1992
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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