Brings one of the most pivotal figures in 20th-century literature brilliantly to life. (25 b&w photos, not seen....
From Atlanta Journal-Constitution editor and critic Boyd, a definitive biography of the groundbreaking novelist, playwright, and anthropologist.
When she died in 1960 at the age of 69, Zora Neale Hurston was buried in an unmarked grave, and all of her books were out of print. Since then, however, her literary stock has only risen. Her 1937 novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, is now recognized as a classic of African-American and feminist literature, and many contemporary black writers have come to regard her as a sort of literary godmother. Ups and downs such as these are typical of Hurston's life. Born in Alabama and raised in the all-black town of Eatonville, Florida, she left home as a teenager, working a variety of odd jobs before eventually ending up in New York City. She attended Barnard (the college's only black student) and became a protégé of pioneering anthropologist Franz Boas. She was also to become one of the leading lights of the Harlem Renaissance, many of whose major figures appear herein, including Langston Hughes (with whom she occasionally collaborated), Countee Cullen, and Carl Van Vechten. After winning a Guggenheim grant, she traveled extensively throughout the American South and to Jamaica and Haiti, collecting stories and observing folk customs. Even so, much about her life is unknown or obscure, and even her close friends admitted she was a difficult woman to know, which makes first-time author Boyd's achievement all that more impressive. He vividly evokes Hurston's life, dispelling many of the myths that have grown up about her along the way. Boyd writes knowledgeably and gracefully, putting into perspective Hurston's considerable achievements both as a literary figure and as a social scientist.
Brings one of the most pivotal figures in 20th-century literature brilliantly to life. (25 b&w photos, not seen. Published in conjunction with the annual Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities in Eatonville, Florida.)Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2003
ISBN: 0-684-84230-0
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
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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
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
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