Earnestly portrays the push and pull between family history and personal growth.
Frank, spirited memoir of identity from a Brooklyn-raised, Egyptian-born Jewish feminist.
“What kind of a Jew are you?” was the question that plagued Zonana (English and Women’s Studies/Borough of Manhattan Community Coll.) as a girl. Her parents were little help. French-speaking Sephardic Jews from Cairo, they appeared, she writes, to suffer from “an involuntary—or is it willed?—failure to recollect.” Even more confusing were the stark differences between the young Zonana and her classmates and neighbors, Jewish families from Eastern Europe who kept kosher homes and ate food completely foreign to an Egyptian-ruled kitchen. Instead of kishke, the Zonanas ate tabbouleh; instead of stuffed cabbage, they devoured stuffed grape leaves and ful medammes (fava beans marinated in lemon juice, garlic and oil). In fact, it was through food that the author began to explore cultural differences, later learning her mother’s recipes (some of which are included in the book). Two journeys helped her uncover her roots. As a girl, she traveled to Brazil, where a large, close-knit brood of relatives had emigrated, and discovered the kind of “tribal life” that she would have experienced had conflict not uprooted her family. Then, 50 years after leaving as a young child, she traveled to Cairo, despite the protests of her family, and was embraced with open arms by both Egyptian Arabs and the few remaining Egyptian Jews. The highlight of this pilgrimage was Zonana’s discovery of the rundown Rambam synagogue. Overcome with emotion, she wept at its broken, locked gates, but her encounter with this place of healing and worship brought her own identity into sharper focus. The story of her cathartic quest is intertwined with family history and the author’s personal voyage through grad school, teaching positions in Oklahoma and New Orleans and finally her flight from Hurricane Katrina.
Earnestly portrays the push and pull between family history and personal growth.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-55861-574-8
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Feminist Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2008
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
