A clear window into Afro-American history, tying together many strands of black culture via the remarkable life of evangelist Father Divine; by Watts (History/Cal. State). Born George Baker in 1879 in the Monkey Run ghetto of Rockville, Maryland, Father Divine became a celebrity preacher of the early/mid-20th century, with missions across the country and a following of hundreds of thousands, whom he fed as well as taught- -for feasting and prayer (and celibacy) came together in his brand of Christianity. The plain but well-detailed description here of post-bellum black life in relatively enlightened Maryland presents an existence so brutal and limited that Father Divine's (or anyone's) successful emergence from it seems a miracle. From Monkey Run, the future preacher moved to Baltimore's Pigtown, and then somehow to L.A., where he joined a storefront church group and learned about speaking in tongues. By the mid-20's, Father Divine was a power in Harlem, with a home and following on Long Island- -where, according to Watts, as his group grew ever-larger he experienced prejudice and legal persecution. Father Divine preached a homespun, antiunion, ``do it yourself'' work ethic with a core of gentle humility and love that manifested itself in the bountiful meals he placed before followers: Before the government could organize welfare in the 30's, he was feeding the poor. No one ever found out where the money came from, but the preacher's indifference to color brought him white followers in high places (one of whom sorely damaged him by seducing a young girl in the movement). The outbreak of WW II ended Father Divine's most potent period, but he was important enough to be consulted by (and to reject) the sinister Rev. Jim Jones in the 60's. In these sympathetic, quiet pages, Father Divine emerges as a significant figure of the Harlem Renaissance: a hard-working humanitarian and man of God.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-520-07455-6
Page Count: 239
Publisher: Univ. of California
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1991
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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