A convincing brief to make an honored place for this now-forgotten adventurer in both African and American history.
Novelist Kennedy (The Exes, 1998, etc.) portrays the first African-American missionary in the Congo.
Virginia-born William Henry Sheppard (1865–1927) wanted to spread the Presbyterian gospel in Africa, but only when a white man agreed to go with him would the church allow Sheppard to travel to the Congo. Of the two missionaries, however, it was Sheppard who had the longer and more distinguished career. He hunted hippos, discovered lost cities, and amassed the West’s first collection of Kuba art at the same time that he fought tropical diseases, survived many attempts on his life, and raised international awareness of Belgian atrocities in the Congo. Sheppard was a celebrity in his own time. Nicknamed “Black Livingstone” after the famous British explorer, he drew large crowds in the US to hear his tales of danger and adventure in Africa. He is mostly unknown today, partly because in 1910 he was sent home in disgrace by the Presbyterian Foreign Missions department, which according to Kennedy was as affronted by Sheppard’s advocacy of human rights as by the illegitimate African child he fathered. The author relies mainly on Sheppard’s journals and letters, as well as documents from other missionaries to tell his story. There are gaps in this material, particularly concerning Sheppard’s motivations, but Kennedy makes graceful use of her novelistic skills to imagine and fill in. (E.g., she speculates plausibly that his desire to work with the Kuba was prompted as much by erotic attraction as the desire to save souls.) Her portrait of 19th-century Africa is neither over-romanticized nor condescending, and she captures the excitement and complexities of Sheppard’s life there. Kennedy explores only gently the paradox that Sheppard was successful in the Congo, yet suffered under segregation and prejudice in the US.
A convincing brief to make an honored place for this now-forgotten adventurer in both African and American history.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2002
ISBN: 0-670-03036-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2001
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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
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
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BOOK REVIEW
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