Studded with some useful observation but fails to properly address the title.
The troubled tale of one man’s search for faith and happiness.
A self-described “professional Muslim,” Moghul shares his life story, as a Muslim navigating his faith and a man struggling with mental illness, in painstaking detail. Plagued by health issues during his childhood, the author went on to an adolescence filled with intense angst. Both defined and confined by his religion, Moghul eventually found himself an atheist, of sorts. “I chose not to believe in God,” he explains, “because, with Him out of the way, there was at last room for me.” Circumstances changed, in a way, once he moved away from home and began his studies at New York University. Islam then became a common bond for community and a cause for which the author could work. He helped create a student Islamic center and was heading it up when the 9/11 attacks occurred, thrusting him into the world of media as a voice for Islam. Nevertheless, he was still detached from Islam as a personal faith and suffering from mental illness. A diagnosis of bipolar disorder, near-suicide attempts, a failed marriage, a failed run at law school, and a troubled career as a spokesman for Islam make up the remainder of the book. Moghul’s work is certainly an intriguing case study in psychology. As for his tie to Islam, that is in fact just one piece of the puzzle, and the author’s self-loathing permeates his life story, which becomes almost a caricature of faith-related guilt. “I felt existentially nauseated,” he writes near the end. Despite some almost inevitable insights into life as an American Muslim, this memoir is, above all, a work of catharsis. Readers play the part of therapist, listening to Moghul’s tortured story, which never finds a true resolution.
Studded with some useful observation but fails to properly address the title.Pub Date: June 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8070-2074-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
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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