Too shallow to satisfy as a memoir, but may appeal to believers.
One woman’s testimonial of her journey from willful child to drug lord to servant of God.
With the assistance of veteran co-author Ritz (Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, 2009, etc.), Thompson-Hairston begins near the end, with the author hiding out in a luxurious Miami Beach hotel, fleeing incarceration. Though being on the lam didn’t faze her—she was well-equipped with fake IDs and numerous safe houses—she was extremely worried about the separation from her young son. The guilt drove her to return home to Los Angeles for his sixth-grade graduation, where federal agents awaited her arrival. Following her dramatic arrest outside her son’s school, the author presents herself “before the game.” Unfortunately, most of the real excitement has passed, and the remainder of the book is largely a recitation of facts and name-dropping. After a brief childhood stint at her grandmother’s in Mississippi, Thompson-Hairston returned to California with a vague sense of the importance of family and an aching desire for a boyfriend. She soon fell for Daff, the charming neighborhood pot dealer, and joined him in business, reaping the material benefits. However, while viewing the opulence on display during an episode of Dallas, she realized that she and Daff were only “hood rich.” So the author decided to increase the stakes by dealing in a more lucrative drug, cocaine. It went well. She and Daff built their empire, becoming suppliers to several cities and growing increasingly wealthy, and they shared their good fortune with their community, throwing barbecues and providing employment. The situation presents a unique scenario of drug dealer strictly as businessperson, never indulging, never losing control. But Thompson-Hairston doesn’t adequately explore this facet, and, without a drug-fueled implosion or violent mayhem—there are some fisticuffs and an off-screen, unexplored murder—the book lacks the salacious elements that make criminal memoirs compelling. Instead she went to prison and found God, and she gives Him all the glory.
Too shallow to satisfy as a memoir, but may appeal to believers.Pub Date: June 22, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-54288-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Avon A/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2010
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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