Having already evoked the Creole experience in folktale (Creole Folktales, 1995) and novel (Texaco, 1997, which won France's Prix Goncourt), Martinique's Chamoiseau proves an inventive memoirist in his account of a boy's struggle to keep his identity in a school committed to crushing it. In the first part, a ``little black boy'' badgers his mother to let him go to school; in the second part, he comes to regret his wish. Some of the school's terrors—sadistic teachers, schoolyard bullies—seem overly familiar. What is fresh is this school's systematic effort to root the Creole—``po'-nigger talk'' associated with poverty and subjection—out of the children and substitute pure French, the language of Martinique's imperial masters. The attempt results mainly in fostering shame and resentment as the students cling to their identity. The child's limited consciousness of this struggle (``his tongue soon seemed heavy to him . . . his accent hateful'') is expertly blended with the adult's awareness of the larger cultural issues. Never a simpleminded ideologue (he ridicules a substitute teacher whose black pride prevented him from ``tackl[ing] either the Universal or its world order''), the author sympathetically portrays the Francophile teacher's motives while condemning his actions; the preferred butt of the teacher's cruelty, Big Bellybutton, is also a memorable character. The irony of a memoir written in French about the evils of French language education is not evaded: The gift of letters is ultimately shown to be ``an inky lifeline of survival'' that allows the author to preserve Creole oral culture. That culture infuses his prose, vividly written in storyteller's rhythms and peppered with such Creole phrases as ``ziggedy-devil.'' Though sometimes distracting, the use of a chorus of rÇpondeurs and frequent shifting from third- person singular to first-person plural help transport the reader inside a foreign sensibility. Sometimes reading like an archetypal narrative of cultural domination, sometimes like an intimate memory from one's own childhood, this memoir rewards the effort to learn its language.
Pub Date: March 19, 1997
ISBN: 0-8032-1477-4
Page Count: 156
Publisher: Univ. of Nebraska
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1997
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s...
Music journalist and musician Wald (Talking 'Bout Your Mama: The Dozens, Snaps, and the Deep Roots of Rap, 2014, etc.) focuses on one evening in music history to explain the evolution of contemporary music, especially folk, blues, and rock.
The date of that evening is July 25, 1965, at the Newport Folk Festival, where there was an unbelievably unexpected occurrence: singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, already a living legend in his early 20s, overriding the acoustic music that made him famous in favor of electronically based music, causing reactions ranging from adoration to intense resentment among other musicians, DJs, and record buyers. Dylan has told his own stories (those stories vary because that’s Dylan’s character), and plenty of other music journalists have explored the Dylan phenomenon. What sets Wald's book apart is his laser focus on that one date. The detailed recounting of what did and did not occur on stage and in the audience that night contains contradictory evidence sorted skillfully by the author. He offers a wealth of context; in fact, his account of Dylan's stage appearance does not arrive until 250 pages in. The author cites dozens of sources, well-known and otherwise, but the key storylines, other than Dylan, involve acoustic folk music guru Pete Seeger and the rich history of the Newport festival, a history that had created expectations smashed by Dylan. Furthermore, the appearances on the pages by other musicians—e.g., Joan Baez, the Weaver, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Dave Van Ronk, and Gordon Lightfoot—give the book enough of an expansive feel. Wald's personal knowledge seems encyclopedic, and his endnotes show how he ranged far beyond personal knowledge to produce the book.
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s personal feelings about Dylan's music or persona.Pub Date: July 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236668-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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