A heavily detailed and highly readable account of the author's lineage.
Seasoned journalist Whitaker reports the history of his parents' lives. Now managing editor of CNN Worldwide, the former NBC Washington bureau chief and former editor of Newsweek, the author decided, one year to the hour after his father's death, to write this book. The structure is largely chronological, beginning with his parents' meeting at Swarthmore in the mid ’50s, when his father, Syl, was one of the only black students and his white mother, Jeanne, taught French. Despite Syl's adultery, they were married for six years and had two sons, Mark and his younger brother, Paul, until Syl asked for a divorce. An estimable expert on Nigeria, Syl was asked to start Princeton's first African-American Studies program, though he was eventually fired because of his drinking. In and out of his sons' lives, often failing to pay child support, Syl weathered numerous trips to rehab, and his alcoholism derailed what might have been a stellar career. He never stayed at any college for too long, due in no small part to the problems that resulted from his womanizing. As a boy, Whitaker struggled to forgive his absences. His anger, manifested itself as compulsive eating, anorexia and long periods of being out of touch with his father. The author chronicles how he made peace with his father, despite his many failings, and how he built for a fulfilling marriage and career. It's difficult to follow the many names and threads, especially in the first half, but the writing comes across as honest and wholly engaging. A fascinating personal treatise on racial identity and complicated father-son dynamics.
Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4516-2754-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2011
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
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