While writing about the first lady, most of these perceptive essayists are also writing about themselves and their country,...
A collection of essays that genuflect before a first lady like no other.
Though many will miss President Barack Obama, this book suggests that Michelle Obama will be missed even more and that her popularity, accomplishments, and sheer presence have bolstered her husband’s. “If he found a way to convince this amazing woman to accept his hand and have his children, he’s exactly the type of man I want to be my president,” explains Damon Young, a columnist and contributing editor for Ebony and one of the few male contributors to a collection dominated by African-American women. He’s not the only one to comment on her “curvy behind,” though he’s the only one who uses that term. Wherever historians end up ranking the Obama presidency, early returns suggest that no first lady has been as beloved and influential since Jackie Kennedy. Michelle has served as “a game changer for Black women, and it turned out all women,” writes editor Chambers, giving her a singular legacy that she is still plenty young enough to extend (as Roxane Gay suggests in her concluding essay). The variety of contributors allows for different perspectives on their common subject—as a fashion icon, a cultural arbiter, the self-proclaimed “mom-in-chief,” partner in a mutual girl crush with Beyoncé, fitness and food advocate, and a wife who supports but does not defer. “The irony is that Michelle Obama makes it look so easy because she is so complicated,” writes Tiffany Dufu. “Simultaneously flawless and imperfect, she brilliantly navigates opposing forces. And in the tension we can all see ourselves.” As Rebecca Carroll suggests, “she represents at least 60 percent of what America will miss most about the Obama presidency.”
While writing about the first lady, most of these perceptive essayists are also writing about themselves and their country, showing the shifts in perception and possibility that she has helped inspire.Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-11496-9
Page Count: 240
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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