The second volume of Green's autobiography (The Green Paradise, 1992), continuing his exacting and scrupulously frank ``inner exploration''—as he recalls his often lonely adolescence in a time of war. In 1916, shy and preternaturally innocent 16-year-old Green— an American in Paris, where he'd been born (and still lives)— joined the American Field Service to fight for France. The war was to be one of the defining experiences of his long life, for while driving ambulances along the Argonne front, the sight of a dead soldier whose ``hands were almost the hands of a little boy hardly able to hold a rifle'' moved Green so much that he vowed never to kill. When he was found to be too young to be driving ambulances, he was sent home to Paris—but he soon enlisted in the American Red Cross and went off to drive ambulances in Italy. Near the end of the war, Green attended the French Army's artillery school and, after Armistice Day, accompanied the occupying French force to Germany. As the volume ends, he's en route to the University of Virginia, his first visit to his native land. These are the major chronological events of the book, but for Green they were only milestones in the more profound journey he was undertaking—the journey into self-discovery, sexual identity, and religious belief. Having recently converted to Catholicism, Green dreamed of becoming a monk, or at least a priest; sexually ignorant, he longed for intimacy but was uncertain how to attain it; and, deeply moral, he feared sin, though he read a risquÇ novel—which he found defiling. In the course of the narrative, his clumsy attempts at heterosexual seduction fail, and, though still innocent, he begins to realize the truth of his sexual nature—a realization, he intimates, that will provoke ``one of the most violent religious crises of his life.'' A compelling example of the examined life worth living, however painful the cost.
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-7145-2969-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Marion Boyars
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1993
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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