The late Jerry Rubin notwithstanding, not all '60s survivors sold out to the junk-bond culture of the '80s when the first gray hair sprouted. Maran, 43, is a case in point. The freelance journalist's first book recounts a life spent questioning ``the system,'' protesting against wars (from Vietnam to the Persian Gulf), and living by choice in the Bay Area's rougher neighborhoods; a life of leftist day-care centers and backpacks ``full of exotic lettuces and tomato-basil baguettes,'' and, above all, of exquisite political correctness. Maran's book has its virtues. She writes movingly of surviving breast cancer, of the death of gay friends from AIDS, of the troubles of raising her two children in an increasingly dangerous world. (She catches one of her children renting out his ``Fuck Authority'' button to his grade-school mates for a dollar a pop—hippie capitalism endures.) At her best, she writes with confidence and good humor, as when she recounts her belated, post-divorce discovery of her lesbianism: ``Ending a marriage is one thing. People do that every day. Becoming a lesbian is another. People do that every day only on Donahue.'' Maran is far less appealing when she turns self- righteous, as when she writes about her dreaded (but highly lucrative) work as a staff writer and ``guardian of...consciousness'' for liberal companies like Banana Republic, Smith & Hawken, and Social Assets; she likens her work as an independent consultant to these firms to ``just visiting'' rather than being ``in jail'' in a Monopoly game, an analogy that makes one's teeth hurt. Maran is engaging, but she's not self-critical enough, as if unaware that there's nothing particularly unusual these days about Bay Area lesbian mothers who eat tofu, ride bicycles, and participate in Zen meditation groups.
Pub Date: March 15, 1995
ISBN: 0-553-09600-1
Page Count: 338
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1995
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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