A bravely told and brutally honest self-help work.
A candid guide for people living with multiple sclerosis.
In 1980, at the age of 25, Petrina began showing symptoms of MS, but it wasn’t until four years later that she was officially diagnosed and decided to become an advocate for others with the disease. This second edition of her book, first published in 2011, offers fresh perspectives provided by an additional, harrowing decade of experience with MS. Petrina’s own story is a key focus, of course, but her main objective is to offer guidance and hope to others. Her background, which she discusses in Part I, tells of her experiences as a National Multiple Sclerosis Society peer counselor and MS blogger (some of her blog posts appear in the back of the book). The second part provides a helpful overview of MS symptoms and treatments as well as other basic information. In Part III, Petrina lays out unvarnished truths about the effects of the disease on the body and the brain; here, with great candor, she explores such topics as the digestive system, sexual dysfunction, spasticity, and what she calls “The Elephants in the Room”: mental and behavioral health, substance abuse, addiction, and suicide. Petrina’s description of her pregnancy and subsequent MS flare-up is particularly poignant. Part IV includes helpful guidance regarding employment, long-term disability, and relationships with other people in addition to an uplifting section titled “Positives to Having MS,” which notes, for example, that “You take nothing for granted.” Petrina writes with a relentless optimism, but she’s unafraid to reveal the toll that the disease has taken on herself and her family. The author’s truth-telling makes her advice all the more affecting. These words from the book’s opening chapter are sure to linger: “I didn’t have a choice about getting [MS], but I did have a choice about whether I was going to let it control me or manage my life.”
A bravely told and brutally honest self-help work.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-1662917943
Page Count: 202
Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.
Memories and life lessons inspired by the author’s mother, who was murdered in 2021.
“Neither my mother nor I knew that her last text to me would be the words ‘Think you’ll be happy,’ ” Avant writes, "but it is fitting that she left me with a mantra for resiliency.” The author, a filmmaker and former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas, begins her first book on the night she learned her mother, Jacqueline Avant, had been fatally shot during a home invasion. “One of my first thoughts,” she writes, “was, ‘Oh God, please don’t let me hate this man. Give me the strength not to hate him.’ ” Daughter of Clarence Avant, known as the “Black Godfather” due to his work as a pioneering music executive, the author describes growing up “in a house that had a revolving door of famous people,” from Ella Fitzgerald to Muhammad Ali. “I don’t take for granted anything I have achieved in my life as a Black American woman,” writes Avant. “And I recognize my unique upbringing…..I was taught to honor our past and pay forward our fruits.” The book, which is occasionally repetitive, includes tributes to her mother from figures like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton, but the narrative core is the author’s direct, faith-based, unwaveringly positive messages to readers—e.g., “I don’t want to carry the sadness and anger I have toward the man who did this to my mother…so I’m worshiping God amid the worst storm imaginable”; "Success and feeling good are contagious. I’m all about positive contagious vibrations!” Avant frequently quotes Bible verses, and the bulk of the text reflects the spirit of her daily prayer “that everything is in divine order.” Imploring readers to practice proactive behavior, she writes, “We have to always find the blessing, to be the blessing.”
Some of Avant’s mantras are overstated, but her book is magnanimous, inspiring, and relentlessly optimistic.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9780063304413
Page Count: 288
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
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