An intriguing memoir that presents an unusual and necessary perspective on sperm donation.
A story of one man’s discovery of his donor-conceived origin, put into historical context.
Boni, the author of All Hands on Deck (2015) and retired after a long career in the tech industry,offers readers a memoir combined with a short account of artificial insemination’s long history. First and foremost, however, it’s a book about biology and identity. It begins with the author’s finding out at age 49 that his deceased father, whom he loved dearly, was not, in fact, his biological parent. Following this revelation, Boni spent the next 20-plus years working through his mother’s dissembling about his beginnings and, with the help of the Boston Public Library and Harvard Medical School Library, unraveling a mystery. Along the way, he describes the difference that the advent of the internet made in his research and discusses the promises and limitations of services such as 23andMe and Ancestry.com. In the end, Boni learns the identities of his biological father and other relations. In addition, the book offers a thoughtful and well-researched look at sperm donation. For much of its history, the author notes, the practice was likened to adultery and involved a lot of secrecy as a result. The author provides readers with a clear picture of that history, which goes back surprisingly far; however, his mention of how it brought Queen Isabella to the throne glosses over her very mixed legacy. Some of the best parts of the book bring out unexpected connections between the historical and the personal; for example, it details the role of John Rock, a fertility specialist who was behind the creation of the birth control pill, in helping couples who wanted biological children and also reveals that he was Boni’s parents’ fertility doctor. At the end, the author includes an essay about his research and offers additional historical observations as well as a template for a donor-conceived person’s bill of rights.
An intriguing memoir that presents an unusual and necessary perspective on sperm donation.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-1626349070
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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