One autobiography is enough for most people, even successful politicians. Writing a second suggests a certain self-obsession, but this is not what comes through the prose of Ferraro’s most recent effort (after Ferraro: My Story, not reviewed). She begins with the story of her realization that the unheralded efforts of her mother and grandmother were fundamental contributions to the achievements of their daughter and granddaughter. The early chapters of the book recount the harsh, difficult circumstances in which her immigrant grandmother came to this country, struggled to survive, and was caught between the expectations of an old world and the opportunities of a new world. Her first-generation mother became a bridge, a woman who could not herself realize the independence and potential of an American woman, but who could make the American dream a reality for her daughter. From this stock Ferraro emerged an educated, strong, and ambitious woman, who believed fate was something to be shaped rather than endured. Too much of the second half of the book focuses on Ferraro’s political career, remaining in touch with the family/roots theme only occasionally, and one wishes that greater insight into her relationships with her own daughters, especially given the demands her career must have placed on her time and family life, would have been provided. Nevertheless, this is an interesting, undeniably moving account of a maternal lineage lovingly written by a woman self-consciously embracing her foremothers. The most enduring image is Ferraro’s presentation of what it means for parents to make genuinely selfless sacrifices for their children. What we see in these pages is not only an expression of the will to endure hardships to benefit one’s child, but also the foresight and humility to embrace a goal for that child which included living a different life than that of her parents. (Radio satellite tour)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-684-85404-X
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1998
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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