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THE GIRLS IN THE BACK OF THE CLASS

Name: THE GIRLS IN THE BACK OF THE CLASS
Author: LouAnne Johnson
ISBN: 0-312-13081-3

by LouAnne Johnson ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1995

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A sequel to the lively recounting of life in an inner-city high school. The original, My Posse Don't Do Homework (1992) is soon to be a major Michekle Pfeiffer motion picture (called Dangerous Minds, it's also due for release in May). That book dealt with Johnson's experiences in a mini-academy set up within an East Palo Alto, Calif., high school. The English teacher's students were hand-picked as children who could make it, given enough attention and encouragement. This volume aims to put the emphasis on young women in the academy, neglected, Johnson feels, both in the first set of tales and in the classroom. She blames herself as well as the system, suggesting that girls are simply overwhelmed in the classroom by boys' noisy demands for attention. Girls whisper, Johnson theorizes simplistically, ``wring their hands in quiet desperation for a few weeks, then disappear.'' She introduces Simoa, who, terrorized into leaving home, finally returns to school pregnant; Tyeisha, whose mother abandoned her; Araceli, an artist, who challenges whether Johnson is truly color-blind. Unfortunately, she doesn't introduce their stories until halfway through the book, and then is often distracted by the noisy demands of the boys in her class. But whether it's about boys or girls, Johnson, an ex-Marine, is also a good storyteller, bringing drama and suspense to tales from her classroom, and total dedication to her students. She gives up her Sundays to take them to concerts, museums, and plays, hugs them, remembers their birthdays, cries for them, and at year's end sees most of them graduate, with many—girls included—headed for college. She too heads back to college—``to get a life,'' as her students have urged her, and a graduate degree in New Mexico. Every student, girl or boy, needs a teacher like this— caring and committed to helping them succeed in school and in life. (26 b&w illustrations, not seen)

Pub Date: May 1, 1995

ISBN: 0-312-13081-3

Page Count: 256

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HISTORICAL & MILITARY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

- BOOK REVIEW
MUCHACHO
by LouAnne Johnson

- BOOK REVIEW
MY POSSE DON'T DO HOMEWORK
by LouAnne Johnson

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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NIGHT

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

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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.

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.