A much-needed treatise on renewing our relationship with the natural world, though the lack of a singular narrative thread...
A memoir recounting a Native-American woman’s spiritual connection with the landscape of the American Southwest.
In her latest work, Laguna Pueblo tribeswoman Silko (Gardens in the Dunes, 1999, etc.) philosophizes on humankind’s place within the natural world. From her Tucson home, the author defends the predators that surround her, depicting rattlesnakes and bees as welcome neighbors rather than harmful intruders. In one instance, when trying to free a rattlesnake from chicken wire, she notes that it “never rattled at me once the whole time it was trapped.” Likewise, she later boasts that while plucking near-drowned bees from the water, “[t]hey never try to sting me,” proof enough for Silko that bees, too, “understand kindness.” The author invites readers to reflect on their own trespasses against nature, while simultaneously sounding the call for a renewed relationship between the natural world and humanity. Silko’s love for landscape is reminiscent of John Muir, and her fastidious account offers a clear, sonorous voice for her wilderness. Her connection with her surroundings transcends the living world, and she argues that nature actually functions as a spiritual go-between linking departed ancestors with living relatives. “After death, it may take some days for the spirit to bid farewell to this world and to the loved ones they want to reassure,” writes Silko, “so they visit us as birds or other wild creatures to let us know that they are in a good place not far away.” While the self-assured vignettes are impressive, the book lacks a central narrative. The author’s world is overflowing with turquoise, snakes, dogs and rain, yet all of these individual components fail to offer the reader a cohesive story.
A much-needed treatise on renewing our relationship with the natural world, though the lack of a singular narrative thread may restrict the work from reaching the audience it deserves.Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-670-02211-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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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