Accept a multicultural society and embrace diversity, says Ramos, or beat your head against the wall. Truer words were never...
Voices and experiences from the great Hispanic emigration to the US, gathered and put into appropriate context by the levelheaded yet passionate journalist Ramos.
There is not a corner in the US—from baseball to education, music to the agricultural sector—where the presence and cultural influence of Hispanics has not made itself felt, and this in the face of widespread racism, discrimination, and exploitation. Univision newscaster Ramos states the obvious—though much of it is also denied by a majority of non-Hispanic citizens: namely, that the racial and ethnic fibers of the country now reflect Latinization, definitively and irrevocably and for the good. This, says Ramos, is because Hispanics have not melted into the mainstream, but have diverted that stream into their own identity, retaining their language and traditions. Here, Ramos presents a sampling of the Hispanic immigrant experience, legal and illegal, detailing not just the value they have added to the US economy, the de facto population numbers, how young kids must grow up fast (translating and mediating all kinds of business), and the problem of the INS, but also a clear understanding of the factors pushing people out of each specific Latin American country and the big pull for coming to the US: jobs. Despite all the setbacks that Hispanics face—from INS raids that shatter families to the relentless snubs from the white population, with plenty of misery and challenges in between—Ramos chronicles the survival of strong families, their drive and pride and relish in their new circumstances. He also brings a balanced perspective to his reporting, best seen at work in the Elián González case, where he is able to make sense of both the Cuban exile population's position and the legal and ethical position of the Clinton administration.
Accept a multicultural society and embrace diversity, says Ramos, or beat your head against the wall. Truer words were never spoken, even if they are still fighting words for too many.Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2002
ISBN: 0-06-621416-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Rayo/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2001
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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