An eye-opening and unique history lesson.
An exploration of the complicated role of fast-food restaurants in low-income black urban neighborhoods, with an emphasis on McDonald’s.
Though most of the book covers the 20th century, Chatelain (History and African American Studies/Georgetown Univ.; South Side Girls: Growing Up in the Great Migration, 2015) begins in August 2014, when a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, killed Michael Brown. The resulting unrest—some of it violent, some peaceful, all of it racially charged—took place in and around a McDonald’s location owned by a black businessman. “The Florissant Avenue McDonald’s,” writes the author, “was both an escape from the uprising and one of its targets.” Chatelain characterizes her book, in part, as “the story of how McDonald’s became black.” She makes a convincing case that racial tension, the civil rights movement, and fast food all combined to change the dynamic of mostly black communities ignored by white power structures. Fast food is generally unhealthy and can certainly lead to obesity. Chatelain realizes that low-income blacks are regularly demonized by whites for making poor nutritional choices. However, as she clearly explains, those apparent “choices” are not often real choices because residents lack access to supermarkets stocking healthy food offerings or eateries offering healthy, affordable menu items. “Today, fast-food restaurants are hyperconcentrated in the places that are the poorest and most racially segregated.” As McDonald’s became the dominant fast-food chain across the country, the white management began awarding franchises to black businesspeople. Almost never, however, did blacks receive locations in economically viable neighborhoods. Through case studies, with Cleveland as one extended example, Chatelain explores the relationships between black franchisees and black residents. In addition to nutritional value and the prices of menu items, the author also cogently examines franchisee support for neighborhood initiatives, such as breakfast feeding programs aimed at low-income children, financing of community centers, and the number of jobs, minimum wage or otherwise, for black residents. Chatelain’s impressive research and her insertion of editorial commentary will prove educational and enlightening for readers of all backgrounds.
An eye-opening and unique history lesson.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63149-394-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
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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