Fans won’t mind, though everyone else will wish this book had had a firmer editor.
An enthusiastic, undisciplined mess of an autobiography by Mexican American writer Villaseñor (Burro Genius, 2004, etc.).
Slightly less New Age–tinged and Mescalito-ish than its predecessor volumes, which have collectively been likened to a Chicano version of Roots, this installment highlights some of Villaseñor’s by now well-practiced narrative tics. One is the seemingly random use of Spanish mashed up in maddeningly repetitive English, as in, “He smiled the biggest smile I’d ever seen him smile and took me into his arms, hugging me in a big abrazo”—hugging him with a hug while smiling a smile, in other words. Another is Villaseñor’s near-trademark use of uppercase words in the middle of otherwise harmless sentences: “Why? Because CONTROL WAS EVERYTHING for him!” Such things notwithstanding, the prurient-minded reader will find Crazy Loco Love a departure in a new direction, for now the author, revisiting his late-adolescent self, becomes exceedingly interested in matters of the flesh: A ripe breast bursts out of a camisa, and it is cause for wonder, for “I’d never seen a girl’s naked breast before, and especially not one this large and up close to my face.” Said vision yields a physical reaction whereby the author’s Levis suddenly seem a touch too tight, and he experiences dizziness and shortness of breath; some 120 pages later he is wetting the bed, but not with urine; later he has finally entered the holy of holies, save with a twist that will raise a shock of recognition in fans of Chinatown. All this makes Villaseñor “crazyloco,” meaning, presumably, crazy in two cultures (though he swears off cultures at book’s end to declare himself simply a Human Being on the way to “BEING with all capitals”), or maybe, given his repetitive habits, simply crazy crazy.
Fans won’t mind, though everyone else will wish this book had had a firmer editor.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-55885-315-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Arte Público
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2008
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
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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