Timely and relevant, particularly in the age of Trump and #MeToo.
A young woman raised as a conservative Evangelical Christian reflects on her community's sexual shaming and the psychological scars that it left.
By any normal standards, Klein's first relationship was about as good as it gets; her high school boyfriend was smart, good-looking, and respectful, and he made her knees buckle. But the author wasn't raised with normal standards. In her community, governed by a strict Evangelical church, not only was sex forbidden, but the onus was on women to enforce that nearly impossible rule. While men were forgiven for impure thoughts and actions, girls and women were blamed for "eliciting men's lust." After Klein and her boyfriend kissed, she panicked, worried that she had committed an unpardonable sin. Citing a message from God, she ended the relationship. Though she eventually distanced herself from the church, the community's view on women and sex left an indelible mark. (At hyperliberal Sarah Lawrence College, she was probably the only virgin on birth control to ask for a pregnancy test, just in case.) Klein examines the damage through an admirably candid look at her own personal life as well as extensive interviews with women (and one trans man) who were raised in similar circumstances. In between anecdotes, the author quotes a variety of sources, from feminist Jessica Valenti to the magazine Christianity Today. In a particularly mind-boggling passage, the author writes that some purity advocates suggest that women set aside "date nights" for Jesus. Klein's personal story is fascinating, but it is the larger context that makes the book important. Politics, religion, and gender are more inextricably linked than ever before; Vice President Mike Pence, for example, is part of the purity movement and doesn't allow himself to be alone with any woman other than his wife, to avoid temptation. In the context of this book, that fact becomes all the more harrowing.
Timely and relevant, particularly in the age of Trump and #MeToo.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2481-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
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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