A slender memoir of a Native American adoptee’s search for her true family. Melanson grew up in New York. She believed herself to be white, Jewish, and rich, a believer in ’60s idealism who had lived on an Israeli kibbutz and served in both the American and Israeli military. When she learned that she in fact had been adopted, Melanson began a long search to uncover her true identity, and the answer surprised her: she was a full-blood Navajo Indian. “At the time I was born, in 1953, and for many years afterwards,” she writes, “about one in four Indian children were taken from their homes and placed in non-Indian settings. It was done by bending and sometimes breaking the law of the land. It was done, white Americans said, ‘for the good of the child.’ “ Melanson’s story attracted considerable attention, yielding articles in the national press and a feature on ABC’s 20/20. Working with journalist Safran, Melanson has expanded what is in essence material for a magazine story into book length, with mixed results: the prose is flat, the narrative strangely without drama. Even so, there are some nice touches: a scene, for one, in which Melanson, now living on the Navajo Reservation in northeastern Arizona, recites a Hebrew prayer for peace, harmony, and success (“ ‘C’mon, God,’ I whispered, ‘make this work’ “), and some affecting moments when she encounters her siblings and learns about the lives of her parents. As a human-interest story, Melanson and Safran’s narrative is just so-so. As an inspirational story for adoptees, particularly American Indians, seeking to uncover their past, however, it has many merits.
Pub Date: Feb. 9, 1999
ISBN: 0-380-97601-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1999
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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