Interesting but self-congratulatory reading.
A celebrated African-American ballet dancer’s account of her unlikely rise to stardom.
Home was a relative term for Copeland. Her mother left her father when she was 2 and took the family from Kansas City to Southern California. There, they moved in with a man who was an alcoholic. Several years later, the author’s mother took her children and moved in with another man who ruled the family home with a stern, and sometimes brutal, hand. In this new environment, Copeland, who loved to perform, discovered that she could also “instantly do moves that it might take others months to achieve.” She began to teach herself gymnastics and, in middle school, became the drill team captain. Encouraged to take ballet classes at the local chapter of the Boys and Girls Club, Copeland learned basic ballet movement with astonishing rapidity. “I began hearing a word over and over again…that would follow me, define me,” she writes. “Prodigy.” But as her dancing flourished, her home life began to crumble. Soon, she, her mother and siblings had moved into a crowded motel room. A ballet teacher brought Copeland to live with her and prepare “for the career that was looming for [her].” Under pressure from her increasingly outraged mother, the courts forced the woman to return the girl to her home. By then, Copeland’s talent had brought her media attention and offers to attend schools sponsored by prestigious dance companies. One, the American Ballet Theatre, eventually became her permanent home. As Copeland learned, however, her dream to dance ballet and become a soloist for the ABT came at a high price, both physically and emotionally. Copeland’s depiction of the drive that pushed her to succeed in a white-dominated art form is inspiring, but she often overplays her narrative hand to the point where self-assurance comes across as smugness or arrogance.
Interesting but self-congratulatory reading.Pub Date: March 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-3798-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2014
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
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
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