A mixed bag, much like many essay collections from pop-culture figures.
Current events and women’s issues humorously tackled by a successful and prolific black woman comedian.
In her follow-up to You Can’t Touch My Hair, 2 Dope Queens star Robinson brings back the unique brand of humor that made her debut book a bestseller. Here, the author explores common issues for women such as the yo-yo ride on the weight roller coaster, her own battle to accept her body image (“every day, I struggle not only with rewiring my brain to not equate self-worth with how my body looks, but also with not letting men and clothing companies define my own gaze”), and the idea of whether she has on “standing jeans or sitting jeans,” the former of which she needs to undo in order to eat her meal. She writes about men’s penis sizes, issues with her mother, the accumulation of debt, how meeting celebrities has affected her, and “being a trash person in a trash world”—to be fair, though, “no one on this planet can completely rid themselves of their trash ways.” All of the essays are filled with hashtags, slang, unnecessary abbreviations, and constant references to current events and pop culture, so readers not familiar with the current trends may get lost from time to time. Although unquestionably a humor book—and much of it is quite funny—the author isn’t afraid to confront serious issues, including violence against blacks, women, and Muslims; the difficulty of being a woman sports fan; and how topics such as abortion rights are constantly under attack by the white men in power in this country. Throughout, it’s clear that Robinson has a specific brand of humor that won’t resonate with everyone. Readers who enjoy her podcast and loved her first book will find even more to appreciate here; others should look elsewhere for a good laugh.
A mixed bag, much like many essay collections from pop-culture figures.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-53414-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Plume
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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