Narrowly focused, but inspiring.
A harrowing memoir by an athlete who survived the Hutu-Tutsi genocide.
Tuhabonye grew up in Burundi, one of four children in the respected, devoutly Catholic Tutsi family. Driven yet sweet, he knew that “education was the key to my future,” and he studied hard. He also loved to run, and by the time he was a teenager dreamed of winning a running scholarship to a college in the U.S. Then, in October 1993, when Tuhabonye was in the middle of what should have been his last year of preparatory school, he was caught in an episode of senseless violence. A group of Hutus came to his school and killed most of the Tutsis with machetes. The rest of the Tutsi students, including Tuhabonye, were stacked in a burning pyre. During hours of agony, Tuhabonye was sustained by a voice that assured him that he would somehow get out alive. Indeed, he was the only Tutsi to survive the massacre. The story of that violent day is told in flashbacks interspersed throughout the otherwise chronological memoir, perhaps because co-author Brozek (Divorced from the Mob, 2004) knew the horrifying account of butchery would be too much for most readers to take all in one piece. After his miraculous escape from the Hutus, Tuhabonye faced a long recovery. That he is able to run again (he is now training for the 2008 Olympics) is impressive enough. Even more remarkable is his spiritual and personal recovery. Drawing on his unwavering faith, Tuhabonye forgives his Hutu tormentors. Later chapters describe his immigration to the U.S., graduation from Abilene Christian University and marriage to a fellow Burundian, with whom he now lives in Austin. The only element his moving book lacks is a sustained analysis of the Hutu-Tutsi struggles and Burundi’s political landscape, which would have given it broader appeal.
Narrowly focused, but inspiring.Pub Date: May 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-081751-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 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
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
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