This concluding volume has the feel of literary durability about it, even more than the much-ballyhooed Rocket Boys (1998).
Hickam’s third installment in his bestselling memoir (The Coalwood Way, 2000, etc.) about coal country West Virginia is, pleasingly, more leathery than the sentimental earlier material as he attains his college years and must return to Coalwood under difficult circumstances.
Hickam has gone off to Virginia Polytech to pursue his dreams of rocket science but is required to return to Coalwood, his hometown that lived and, unfortunately, breathed coal. It is only for the summer, but Hickman’s none too happy to be back in Coalwood, despite his obvious affection for the place. His father is under a cloud for a deadly mining mishap; his mother has moved down to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, in what looks like a potential marital split; and Hickam must take a job in the mines to pay for an auto accident, which means he must join the union, to his parents’ horror. His father pretty much turns him out, but there are bright lines to the story as well: a track-laying contest, a girl named Rita, and the story behind his father’s reticence in talking about the night of the accident that killed his friend. Hickam’s dulcet voice is a soothing counterpoint to the familial and social woes of Coalwood, paternalistic company town or not, and despite the steel bosses and the secrets of the tight-knit town and the brutality of life in the mine—something made very real here by Hickam’s being right down there—the tale unfolds like a bedtime story. That things turn out for the best makes this an appealing capstone. Hickam ends with a short chapter on his life after leaving Coalwood that is way too rushed—how jarring “Pleiku” and “Dak To” sound in this context, or learning that Hickam worked only at the fringes of rocket science.
This concluding volume has the feel of literary durability about it, even more than the much-ballyhooed Rocket Boys (1998).Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2001
ISBN: 0-385-33522-9
Page Count: 354
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2001
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
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
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