Uneven but emotional, grateful and often wise.
Acclaimed playwright Shange (Ellington Was Not a Street, 2004, etc.) offers a collection of personal essays dealing with anger, pride, creativity, family, identity, mental health and love.
The author, who also writes poetry, children’s books and novels, visits just about every human emotion in these pieces, which date from various decades in her life. In some, she employs her idiosyncratic spelling (waz, enuf), capitalization (none) and punctuation (minimal), but the later pieces adhere to more conventional mechanics—though never to conventional ideas. Her anger is evident throughout—from patronizing whites to black rappers (whose misogynistic lyrics and ideas she equates with the vileness that produced slavery) to the silence of black male intellectuals, whom she accuses of sanctioning rappers’ misogyny. She writes informatively about the genesis of her most famous work of dram for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf, examines her personal history for her love of language, dance and music and confesses, near the end, that she actually likes men—though she believes that most of them have one goal in mind with women. Among her most affecting pieces are two short essays about her parents, one for each. Her father was a physician, and Shange writes emotionally about his love of music and his exuberant dancing with her mother. She recalls hiding in her mother’s closet, absorbing her. She includes a promising piece about learning other languages, but spoils it with chunks of block quotations that effectively silence her voice and still her rhythm, as well as a touching poem addressed to an unnamed young poet. Along the way, Shange offers glimpses of her visits to a shrink, though she does not provide any clinical diagnosis, just some hints of malaise and unhappiness.
Uneven but emotional, grateful and often wise.Pub Date: Dec. 6, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-312-20616-1
Page Count: 160
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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