Still, this opens a window into the world of autism to provide an unforgettable view.
Revealing first-person account of what it is like to live with Asperger syndrome.
Although Prince-Hughes eventually managed to earn a Ph.D. despite her socially crippling disorder (a form of autism), she had a disastrous early life. She dropped out of high school and lived on the street, later earning her living as an exotic dancer. She attributes the turnaround in her life to the gorillas at Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo. Unable to communicate or connect in any meaningful way with humans, the author began spending hours at the zoo silently watching a family of gorillas, closely observing their ways and their relationships with each other. She developed deep empathy with these primates, referred to here as “gorilla people” because in her view they fulfill all the criteria for personhood, serving as models of gentle care, protectiveness, acceptance, and love. Human emotions, long inexplicable to Prince-Hughes, became more understandable; she learned to relax in social situations and gradually had more success in human encounters. After a while she was hired by the zoo and resumed her education, eventually earning a doctorate in interdisciplinary anthropology. The author’s affinity with gorillas was great, and she came to see herself as a bridge between gorilla people and human people as well as between autistic people and normal people. By the end of her memoir, she has formed a loving relationship with another woman and together they are raising a son. Lest the reader assume that her Asperger syndrome has been vanquished, Prince-Hughes includes an epilogue detailing the huge difficulties that it still presents in her daily life. In a generally excellent debut, some of the author’s claims strain credulity: not all readers will believe that both she and her son recall the experience of being born, that she can understand the speech of a bonobo chimp, or that the gorilla Koko has recognized her as a fellow gorilla.
Still, this opens a window into the world of autism to provide an unforgettable view.Pub Date: March 9, 2004
ISBN: 1-4000-5058-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Harmony
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2004
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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