In the wake of such feminist calls-to-arms as Susan Faludi's Backlash (p. 1133), Paula Kamen's Feminist Fatale (p. 1137), and Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth (p. 389), Steinem's inwardly turned examination of how men and women sabotage themselves by suppressing the ``child within'' appears decidedly retro. Nevertheless, her reflections on her own and others' spiritual struggles may give a new generation of activists pause for further reflection. In the wake of Ms. magazine's sale and her own resignation as its editor, Steinem found herself, she says, with the time and inspiration to write a book she'd had in mind for years—a study of the psychological and societal factors that negatively influence self-esteem. The result, she tells us, was a heavily footnoted, scholarly report whose reliance on experts' opinions revealed Steinem's own deep lack of confidence, and inspired her to toss away her original manuscript and come out of the closet herself. Recounting her own early life as the daughter of a factory worker who divorced his mentally ill wife when Gloria was only ten, Steinem details the natural progression from a co-dependent relationship with her mother to an unconscious adult sense of being ``co-dependent with the world.'' Forced by her need to wall off her past, she led a life of outer-world confrontations until, through therapy undertaken as research for her book, she began to master her ``inner child.'' By including others' tales of self- actualization through a ``revolution from within''—the creation of a winning chess team in Spanish Harlem, the transformation of a housewife into an entrepreneur, etc.—Steinem illustrates how others' psychic journeys may lead in much different directions than her own. Still, much of what is recommended here will strike many as old hat—and, in the end, more interesting as an update on the feminist's life than as a practical aid to others. A piquant counterpoint to recently revitalized, outer-directed feminist fashion.
Pub Date: Jan. 21, 1992
ISBN: 0-316-81240-4
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1991
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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