A spirited collection of more than 50 short writings by African-American college students. The strength of this distinct collection, edited by essayist, poet, and law student Tarpley, lies in the variety of voices presented. In essays, fiction, and poetry, young African-Americans grapple with a wide gamut of issues ranging from growing up gay in a racist, homophobic society to attempting to resolve the tensions within their own communities. The most effective writings are those that don't usually make their way into the mainstream press. In ``Pimp 4 Life,'' San Francisco State University film student Lichelli Lazar-Lea writes graphically about the misogyny she faces as an active member of the Bay Area Hip Hop community. She ends by urging her sisters to value themselves enough to stop competing with one another over men who disdain them. ``We are treating brothers like boys if we allow them to disrespect us, and they are definitely not boys, even though racist society teaches them that they are.'' In another rarely aired issue, Sarah Van't Hul describes growing us as an adopted black child in a white family in Ann Arbor, Mich. She experienced sometimes cruel rejection from blacks and whites; she shares unusual insights about both worlds and condemns the Black Social Workers Association for depriving many children of loving homes in advocating that whites no longer be allowed to adopt black children. UCLA graduate student Michael Datcher writes movingly about ``his'' L.A. and the police brutality that he and other blacks have known for too long. In this, as in other pieces, the chasm between white and black sensibilities is disturbingly apparent. Most of the voices are fresh and authentic- -so much so that a glossary of slang would have helped readers appreciate the rap-related pieces. Some of the essays verge on polemics, and not all of the poems are accessible, but this book is a valuable eye-opener for anyone who wants to know ``what time it is.''
Pub Date: Jan. 31, 1995
ISBN: 0-8070-0928-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
