Overemphasizes failed romances rather than the author’s more interesting personal history.
Milien’s debut memoir describes his numerous trials with love and faith from his childhood in Haiti to his adult life in the United States.
As a child in Port-au-Prince, Milien grew up in a world where loas, the spirits of Haitian voodoo, acted as intermediaries between God and human problems, and he always tried to follow the primary moral law of Haitian culture: “Be obedient to and respectful of seniors so they will not use voodoo to punish [you].” Against this backdrop of spells and superstitions, Milien first learned that some people are untrustworthy: Friends betrayed him, and elders cursed him for no reason. After high school, the author lost his mother in a tragic accident and found himself in love with two women: Margaret and Francine. Milien finally chose Margaret, who died of a sudden illness, leaving him to feel betrayed by God. He then moved to New York with his next love, Rosita, only to feel betrayed again when he discovered a note in which she claimed she did not love him anymore. Milien spent the next several years of his life exploring different churches and religions, ranging from Episcopalian to the Church of Latter-day Saints, acquiring several master’s degrees in various fields of study and continuing to question his relationship with God and his handling of romantic and interpersonal dilemmas. Milien uses his life’s misfortunes to wax philosophical on the nature of God and man. At several points, he produces lovely passages, such as the early conclusion: “I must bend to God’s slightest caprices….I should consider all tragedies as opportunities for ecstasy.” While his language can be beautiful and engaging, Milien repeatedly revisits these reflections, often to the detriment of his own story. The memoir fixates on his various romantic entanglements and their effect on his worldview. Consequently, his success in higher education, the life he builds in America, and his thoughts on the fascinating world he grew up in—subjects that seem worthy of more exploration—receive very little attention.
Overemphasizes failed romances rather than the author’s more interesting personal history.Pub Date: Dec. 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5320-6366-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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