There’s plenty of chopsocky goodness here, but Chan also reveals a soulful, thoughtful side—just one you wouldn’t want to...
Hong Kong–born Chan (I Am Jackie Chan, 1998), action star and the world’s best-known martial artist, outlines his life story in this (mostly) amiable memoir.
“We can’t beat blockbusters like Black Panther and Wonder Woman, but they can’t beat us when it comes to kung fu films or pure action—and no one, but no one, can top my huge collection of sticking tape!” So proclaims Chan, who is nothing if not competitive, though he’s usually good-humored about it. He was born into the middling rungs of territorial Hong Kong society, his father a martial artist who worked as a chef in a consulate, which landed Chan in a school among rich kids. Chan soon learned to defend himself with his fists, which led him to a school that blended martial arts and acting—just the recipe for the career he carved out for himself, landing his first starring role not long after Bruce Lee’s death in a movie called New Fist of Fury, “a major work that would herald the arrival of a new kung fu star,” as Chan was promised. He worked his way from contract player to star, always with an eye on the bigger prize of Hollywood. On that note, the memoir begins with his being awarded a lifetime achievement Oscar in 2016. “After fifty-six years, making over two hundred films, and breaking many bones, I never thought I’d win one,” he allows, before adding that he wouldn’t mind winning another for a film in which he starred or directed. The book is definitively warts (and cracked skulls and broken bones and gallons of blood) and all: The author confesses to all kinds of bad behavior, though he writes that his greatest regret is not having been a better student. He warmly praises friends and colleagues such as Michelle Yeoh (“not many people can match me in my willingness to go for it”), Chris Tucker, and Sylvester Stallone.
There’s plenty of chopsocky goodness here, but Chan also reveals a soulful, thoughtful side—just one you wouldn’t want to mess with.Pub Date: Dec. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-982107-21-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2018
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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