A compelling documentary portrait of the real Marmee, whose life provided the impetus for Little Women and who emerges here...
This revealing collection of Abigail May Alcott’s writings provides previously unknown details of the life of a 19th-century daughter, sister, wife and mother who associated with transcendental luminaries, suppressed her own dreams to provide for her family, inspired her famous daughter Louisa, and remained an ardent reformer for abolition and women’s rights.
Until now, little has been known of Abigail’s life, since many of her private papers were destroyed after her death. While writing the dual biography, Marmee & Louisa (2012), LaPlante uncovered surviving, untapped pages of Abigail’s journals and letters in archival and private collections, as well as a newly discovered cache of letters detailing May and Alcott family life from the 1830s to the 1870s. In compiling, editing and annotating a sampling of these private letters, poems, journal entries, miscellaneous papers, recipes and remedies, LaPlante, a descendant of the May family, sought to convey the spirit of Abigail’s writings. Organized chronologically, the writings are grouped by early years, courtship and marriage, motherhood, early middle life, employment, late middle age and old age. They trace Abigail’s evolution from a sickly, youngest child of seven, to a serious young scholar eschewing marriage, to a struggling wife and mother forced to support her family for decades, to a middle-age social worker and early advocate of women’s suffrage, to an aging grandmother. Abigail’s diaries and letters disclose an intelligent, self-sacrificing, tender woman whose moral conviction and strong character kept her engaged in social issues despite her tragic marriage. Each document includes the date and place of composition as well as footnotes for references unfamiliar to contemporary readers. Helpful annotations and a chronology provide further contextual detail.
A compelling documentary portrait of the real Marmee, whose life provided the impetus for Little Women and who emerges here as a noteworthy woman in her own right.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4767-0280-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
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
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
© 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.
