An exploration of the guilt and anger associated with breaking out of a box fashioned by years of abuse.
In her memoir, Mayfield (Acting A to Z, 2007, etc.) describes the hurt, longing and anger she experienced while excavating years of emotional abuse endured at the hands of her parents. The poem, written by Mayfield, that opens the book encapsulates the author’s struggle best: “It’s been many years now / That I’ve been in the box of daughter— / I’ve worked a lot on the box, / Making holes to see out / … I’ve pushed and pushed at the walls for years and years, / Trying to make the box fit me better, / But it’s a very strong box.” For Mayfield, the strength of the guilt and responsibility associated with being a daughter trapped her, even following the death of her parents. Her father, the son of a minister, was extremely lonely, living a solitary life disconnected from his wife and relying heavily on Mayfield. Her mother, a model citizen who was always helping others, was insatiable in her need for attention and enacted a reign of terror in the household. Mayfield’s discovery of her true self through daunting psychological work is a long process that she explains by describing the methods of therapy, thought, writing and reading that led her to understand the impetus of many of her issues and to improve her outlook and health. The flashbacks in the book, though clumsily called attention to with the use of present tense, are heartbreaking. One specific flashback recounts her mother’s cruel use of power to frighten Mayfield and her friends during her seventh birthday party. Mayfield’s memoir is a testament to the merit of psychological healing through the understanding and expression of feelings and allowing the past trauma of the psyche to come to the forefront to be acknowledged. Full of stark realities of abuse but also the hopefulness of healing, Mayfield’s memoir provides helpful insight to those facing similar struggles.
Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2012
ISBN: 978-1936447435
Page Count: 204
Publisher: Maine Authors Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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