An eye-opening account that disturbs with its depiction of the place of women in Iranian society, but warms the heart in its...
Richly detailed memoir by a daughter who, as an adult, learned of her Iranian mother’s secret past: arranged marriage at 13, a baby at 14 and divorce while still a teenager.
After Darznik (English/Washington and Lee Univ.) found a photograph of her mother Lili as a child bride, Lili recorded for her a series of tapes about her family and her life in Iran. Lili’s story begins with her grandmother, whose daughter Kobra is Lili’s mother and a continuing and forceful presence in her life. Darznik’s memoir is not a transcription of audio tapes, however, but an expansion of them into an engaging account of life in Iran in the 20th century, full of memorable characters whose lives take unexpected turns. The author’s portrayal of Iranian society and male-female relations are revealing, and her descriptions of clothing, food and drink are especially engrossing. To escape from her marriage to a sadistic husband, Lili was forced to leave her baby with him. Eventually, she moved to Germany, trained as a midwife and acquired a European husband. Returning to Iran, Lili thrived in her new career, but her husband drank too much and failed in business. Threatened by the Iranian Revolution in the late ’70s, the family fled to the United States when the author was five, settling in California along with hundreds of thousands of other Iranian émigrés. Since divorce was considered as shameful as prostitution, Lili kept her past a secret. While Lili remained Iranian to the core, retaining the values of her native culture, the author grew up as an American, failing to become “The Good Daughter”—the modest, obedient girl with perfect manners that her mother held up as a model. It was only when she learned of her mother’s past and of the existence of her older half sister in Iran that she understood that “The Good Daughter” was a real person, not just a figure in a cautionary tale.
An eye-opening account that disturbs with its depiction of the place of women in Iranian society, but warms the heart in its portrayal of their gritty endurance.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-446-53497-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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