A powerful memoir from a dedicated fighter for social justice.
A celebrated Muslim American activist’s memoir of how she came into her identity as a social justice leader in post–9/11 America.
Sarsour, executive director of the Arab American Association in New York, grew up between two worlds: her parents’ Palestinian homeland and her native Brooklyn. She embraced both: for the warm ties she formed with relatives and the “brown, Black and beige kids” in a neighborhood that looked “like every nineties portrayal of [Brooklyn] ever seen in a Spike Lee joint.” She attended John Jay High School, a “notorious gang farm,” where she began to see how her life as a Muslim American was “inextricably interwoven” with the lives of all people of color. When 9/11 took place a few years after she graduated, Sarsour witnessed firsthand the way innocent Muslims suddenly became branded as terrorists. She began working with her father’s cousin Basemah, a social justice activist who ran the Arab American Association of New York. The author credits Basemah, who died tragically just four years later, with teaching her to “make waves…stir the pot…raise holy hell” when communities were in trouble. After Basemah’s death, Sarsour became involved in the fight to create a ground zero mosque as well as protests against the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk policies, which targeted people of color. The author later joined forces with fellow activists Tamika Mallory and Carmen Perez to work on both local and national social justice projects to end racial profiling. The trio organized the Women’s March on Washington to protest the election of a racist, misogynistic president. Despite these triumphs, Sarsour discovered that her own heightened visibility made her family a target for “an avalanche of hate” while compromising her role as a mother. Candid and poignant, this book offers an intimate portrait of a committed activist while emphasizing the need for more Americans to work against the deep-seated inequalities that still haunt the country.
A powerful memoir from a dedicated fighter for social justice.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-0516-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: 37 Ink/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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
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