A worthy memoir for a truly unique individual.
With the assistance of Ritz (co-author: Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, A Memoir, 2009, etc.), Bean chronicles the story of his life as a minister and as the singer of the 1977 gay-liberation–themed disco hit, “I Was Born This Way.”
Born to a teenaged mother in 1950s Baltimore, the author was raised by neighbors and suffered an extremely difficult childhood. He was sexually abused at a very young age, by his foster uncle and by other men, and his birth mother died of complications from a botched abortion when he was a teenager. He also struggled with his homosexuality in a religious African-American community. After a suicide attempt at age 14, he came to accept and embrace his sexual orientation. He was also a devout Christian who went on to make a living singing in gospel groups, including the famed Alex Bradford Singers. In 1977, Motown Records asked him to sing the vocals for a disco song entitled “I Was Born This Way, which featured a memorable lyrical hook with a startlingly up-front gay perspective—“I’m happy / I’m carefree / And I’m gay / I was born this way.” It became hugely popular in dance clubs, but when Motown offered him a chance to follow up with an album of heterosexual love songs, he declined, not wanting to portray himself as someone he wasn’t. In 1982, Bean was ordained as a minister and opened his own church, the Unity Fellowship Church of Christ, which was accepting of all sexual orientations. (“God doesn’t care if you’re straight, gay, bi, or transgendered. God contains everything,” he preached.) He also established the Minority AIDS Project to help underserved AIDS patients in Los Angeles. Bean has certainly led a one-of-a-kind life, and his fast-moving, engaging memoir illuminates the 1960s and ’70s gospel world and provides the rare perspective of a homosexual minister. The early chapters, which detail terrible sexual abuse, can be harrowing at times, but the message is insightful and often powerful.
A worthy memoir for a truly unique individual.Pub Date: June 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4165-9282-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2010
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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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