More an extended whine than a paean to pluck.
After memorably describing her journey from a Puerto Rican barrio to acceptance at a prestigious New York high school in When I Was Puerto Rican (1993) and Almost a Woman (1998), the author now vividly recalls the long infatuation that put her life on hold in the ’70s.
As usual, Santiago writes well, but this latest memoir at times seems labored and overly self-absorbed. Though she is still nostalgic for Puerto Rico and her family, she seems quite nonchalant about keeping in touch. She is also quick to discern ethnic prejudice, though she has vast numbers of supportive Anglo friends and ultimately benefits from affirmative action. Fundamentally, her problem is more the usual one of loving the wrong man too much. Just 21, her dancing career on hold, she decides to move to Florida with Ulvi, a much older Turkish man. She knows her action will shock her mother, who, though never married herself, hopes her daughter will wed, but Santiago is too much in love to care. Ulvi remains a cipher: he has directed or produced (Santiago never really knows) a famous Turkish movie he now wants to distribute in the US and is going to Florida to raise funds. He never gets the money in the seven years of their relationship, though he makes countless mysterious trips and phone calls. He forbids Santiago to answer the phone, and she supports him when he goes back to graduate school in Texas and New York. While he studies, Santiago works, does his research, types his papers, and writes up his notes. Though he refuses to marry her, Ulvi is insanely jealous, dictating what she should wear and whom she should befriend. Santiago increasingly feels stifled, but only begins to liberate herself when a colleague suggests she apply to Harvard. She is accepted and slowly begins to reclaim her independence.
More an extended whine than a paean to pluck.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-7382-0820-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Da Capo
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2004
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
