An earnest and well-written account of a search for self.
This memoir follows a Cambodian American gay writer and activist’s quest through childhood and adolescence to find his identity.
Chann was born in 1991 into a Cambodian refugee family in Stockton, California, and in his early years, he lived with his mother, his grandmother, or his godparents in the state. Later, he moved with his mother, his sister Tanya and other siblings, his grandmother, and his mother’s abusive partner to Portland, Maine. By 2000, Chann and his sister were living in Acton, Maine, in the first of a series of foster homes; they would finally end up living in a rural part of the state with the Berrys, a family of white, middle-class evangelicals; their religious views created a feeling of dissonance as the author came to understand that he was gay. Throughout his childhood, he writes, he was frequently the only Asian American student at the Christian schools he attended; he reflected upon his identity and belief system and, after transferring from a biblical college to the University of Southern Maine, became what he considered his truest self. Throughout this remembrance, he offers striking details, particularly about food, which effectively mirror his internal emotional landscape: “Food was another language that my grandmother spoke—and this one I could understand. She fed me. I ate. And if my plate was empty of jasmine rice, she’d pile on another plate’s worth, as if to declare the abundance of her love.” This sometimes-heartbreaking narrative illustrates multiple levels of identity development, showing how children often reject parts of who they are to blend with a dominant culture. However, he also lucidly shows how he found his authentic identity as a gay man in college, and later integrated his Cambodian sense of self after meetings with his mother, biological father, grandmother, and extended family members. Some readers may wish that Chann had included more about his later adult life. However, as is, this is a beautiful story that will resonate with a wide audience.
An earnest and well-written account of a search for self.Pub Date: June 21, 2022
ISBN: 9781952143359
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Islandport Press
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
The stormy career of a top Navy SEAL hotspur. Commander Marcinko, USN Ret., recently served time at Petersburg Federal Prison for conspiracy to defraud the Navy by overcharging for specialized equipment—the result, he says, of telling off too many admirals. It seems that his ornery and joyous aggression, nurtured by a Czech grandfather in a flinty Pennsylvania mining town, has brought him to grief in peace and to brilliance in war. Serving his first tour in Vietnam in 1966 as an enlisted SEAL expert in underwater demolition, Marcinko returned for a second tour as an officer leading a commando squad he had trained. Here, his accounts of riverine warfare—creeping underwater to Vietcong boats and slipping over their gunwales; raiding VC island strongholds in the South China Sea; steaming up to the Cambodian border to tempt the VC across and being overrun- -are galvanic, detailed, and told with a true craftsman's love. What did he think of the Vietcong? ``The bastards—they were good.'' His battle philosophy? ``...kill my enemy before he has a chance to kill me....Never did I give Charlie an even break.'' After the aborted desert rescue of US hostages in the Tehran embassy, Marcinko was ordered to create SEAL Team Six—a counterterrorist unit with worldwide maritime responsibilities. In 1983, the unit was deployed to Beirut to test the security of the US embassy there. Easily evading the embassy security detail, sleeping Lebanese guards, and the Marines, the SEALs planted enough fake bombs to level the building. When Marcinko spoke to ``a senior American official'' about the problem, the SEAL's blunt security advice was rejected, particularly in respect to car-bomb attacks. Ninety days later, 63 people in the embassy compound were killed by a suicide bomber driving a TNT-filled truck. Profane and asking no quarter: the real nitty-gritty, bloody and authentic. (Eight-page photo insert—not seen.)
Pub Date: March 2, 1992
ISBN: 0-671-70390-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1992
Great fun.
The second installment of childhood recollections (after Opposite the Cross Keys, 1988) by mystery writer S.T. Haymon, who here evokes a sheltered 12-year-old's further encounters with life's earthier side.
Haymon's 1920's, upper-middle-class childhood revolved typically around school, home, loyal servants, and a pair of doting, well-educated parents—until age 12, when her father died and her mother decided to move to London. Refusing to accompany her, the precocious, comically self-confident Sylvia tried to limit this series of upheavals by insisting on remaining in Norfolk in the care of a favorite teacher—except that at the last minute her headmistress (already a sworn enemy) switched houses, arranging for two maiden schoolteachers to put Sylvia up in their house instead. Sylvia knew that the Misses Gosse and Locke were eccentric. What she didn't know was that the skinny, aggressive history teacher and the teary, puppy-like math professor were lesbians. Nor did she notice as Miss Locke's increasingly desperate infatuation with her began to lead the entire household toward destruction. Amusing characters abound—the gardener, Sylvia's only ally, whose faith in the value of a virgin's tips on the horse races led him to pay her for advice; the dour housekeeper who sang opera and downed bottles of gin; the art teacher's model who bewildered Sylvia with talk of "randy old dykes"; and the spiritual channel who informed her that her daddy was watching everything she did from heaven. Haymon's depiction of herself as an unusually clever, frequently petulant, and thoroughly practical young girl obsessed with filling her stomach while all sorts of passionate fireworks exploded around her evokes an era when secrets still existed and scandals were bursting to happen—and makes for slyly humorous, very British entertainment.
Great fun.Pub Date: Dec. 14, 1990
ISBN: 312-04986-2
Page Count: -
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
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