Rich in local color and lore, an evocative introduction to a unique way of life.
A young woman from the matrilineal Moso culture describes her upbringing in one of China’s most distinctive minorities, assisted by an American anthropologist.
The Moso people live in the foothills of the Himalayas and ethnically resemble the neighboring Tibetans more than the Chinese. They are Buddhists but also worship their own gods, who are honored at annual festivals. Women do not marry but instead freely choose a succession of men to father their children. Men live with their mothers and only visit other women, who in turn rely on their male relatives and children to help run their households. Practicing what is called “walking marriage,” the Moso are described by Mathieu in an afterword as “the only people in the world who consider marriage an attack on the family.” Namu was her mother's third daughter; each had a different father. She vividly details village life: women work the fields while men herd the yaks; a “Skirt Ceremony” marks a girl’s arrival into womanhood; and at her grandmother’s burial a straw figure wearing a beautiful dress was put on a decorated horse and paraded around the village to represent the soul’s last ride. Born in 1966, Namu recalls the arrival of the Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution; finding the diet and the climate too daunting, they soon left. (The communist authorities have been similarly unsuccessful in imposing monogamy on the region.) At 16, Namu was chosen to sing in a competition that took her to Beijing. Briefly back home, passionately responding to her boyfriend’s embraces but fearing that pregnancy would end her dreams, she ran away and won a scholarship to the prestigious Shanghai Conservatory. Her mother broke up her room with an ax and burned the contents, but they reconciled on a subsequent visit. Though she had to live in the wider world, Namu writes, “We both knew now that I would always come back.”
Rich in local color and lore, an evocative introduction to a unique way of life.Pub Date: Feb. 19, 2003
ISBN: 0-316-12471-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2002
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
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
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