A funny, thought-provoking, and profound memoir about the intersection of Blackness and health.
An “unambiguously Black” Cuban writer uses her life story to examine multiple aspects of community care.
After “two decades working my ass off in the food service industry,” Gordon was exhausted. She left New York City, where she was working as a server, self-medicating with drugs, and making ends meet by selling them. “I was weary in my soul, in my heart,” she writes. “Tired of everything.” She moved to Miami, intending to get sober and to heal. She started therapy and joined an online support group for adults who, like her, have such severe dental problems that they must have all of their teeth extracted and replaced by dentures. While in Miami, Gordon also began Casa de Tami, a program that invites individual Black activists from “marginalized genders” to stay at her home and be treated compassionately. Eventually, with the help of a community fundraiser, Gordon moved to New Orleans, where she continued to document the ways in which members of close-knit communities support each other’s healing. While much of the book is about deeply traumatic struggles, Gordon begins her story by letting readers know that she is not writing “trauma porn.” The author’s voice is intimate, vulnerable, frank, humorous, and affectionate, and her impressive capacity for self-reflection infuses her work with refreshingly original insights. She intersperses her memoir with a beautifully curated selection of the voices of people who share the author’s talent for conversational, honest prose. “I’m not a teacher, guru, or authority,” she writes. “Hood Wellness isn’t a how-to kind of book. It’s a reflection of the power of community and an affirmation that, regardless of our intersections and hardships, there is more for us when we walk together.” Gordon’s vision of a more just future feels both inspiring and possible.
A funny, thought-provoking, and profound memoir about the intersection of Blackness and health.Pub Date: June 18, 2024
ISBN: 9781955905343
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Row House Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2024
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
© Copyright 2024 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.
