WHEN I WAS PUERTO RICAN - Kirkus Reviews

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shop now amazon bookshop bookshelf WHEN I WAS PUERTO RICAN

by Esmeralda Santiago ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1993

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A beguiling record of a tremendous journey, epic in its own way, from childhood in a vibrant Puerto Rican barrio to triumph at Harvard, with a defining pause in a drab Brooklyn along the way. Now a filmmaker with her own company, Santiago, eldest of 11 children, was born in a rural barrio. Her parents—the beautiful, ambitious Mami and the frustrated artist Papi—weren't married, a source of constant family tension in her childhood. Meanwhile, the family lived in a house made of rippled metal sheets, ``a giant version of the lard cans used to haul water from public fountains,'' and grew its own fruits and vegetables. But despite the crudeness, there was room to play, fresh air, and a freedom that would never be replicated in their subsequent homes as the author's mother, tiring of Papi's infidelities, moved the children time and again to town, into lodgings or relatives' homes, until reconciliations brought everyone together again. The reconciliations grew more and more infrequent, however, and Santiago, a good student, had to change schools and suffer the jeers of city-bred children, as well as adjust to the often harsh regimens imposed by the differing households she was forced to live in. Finally, after Papi categorically refused to marry her, Mami decided—after traveling to N.Y.C. with one of the children, who needed medical treatment—to move to Brooklyn. But the new house proved to be a menacing place, where ``even snow was dangerous'' as children threw deadly snow-covered rocks at one another. Santiago was ambitious, though, determined to get out of Brooklyn ``and desperate to feel grass under [my] feet instead of pavement.'' She finally got her wish by excelling academically and winning a place in New York's High School of Performing Arts. Cleareyed, quietly powerful, and often lyrical: a story of true grit.

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Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1993

ISBN: 0-201-58117-5

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Addison-Wesley

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1993

Categories:

CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | ETHNICITY & RACE | GENERAL CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES

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More by Esmeralda Santiago

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  LAS MADRES

  by Esmeralda Santiago

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  CONQUISTADORA

  by Esmeralda Santiago

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  A DOLL FOR NAVIDADES

  by Esmeralda Santiago & illustrated by Enrique O. Sanchez

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Awards & Accolades

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• Kirkus Reviews' Best Books Of 2016

• New York Times Bestseller

• Pulitzer Prize Finalist

WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR

by Paul Kalanithi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 19, 2016

A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...

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Awards & Accolades

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Google Rating

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• Kirkus Reviews' Best Books Of 2016

• New York Times Bestseller

• Pulitzer Prize Finalist

A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.

Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”

A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.

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Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6

Page Count: 248

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES

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  Best of the Century: ‘When Breath Becomes Air’

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shop now amazon bookshelf A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

by Howard Zinn ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1979

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For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.

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Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979

ISBN: 0061965588

Page Count: 772

Publisher: Harper & Row

Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979

Categories:

GENERAL HISTORY | GENERAL CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | UNITED STATES | POLITICS | HISTORY

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More by Rebecca Stefoff

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  A YOUNG PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

  by Howard Zinn ; adapted by Rebecca Stefoff with by Ed Morales

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  TRUTH HAS A POWER OF ITS OWN

  by Howard Zinn with Ray Suarez

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  THE HISTORIC UNFULFILLED PROMISE

  by Howard Zinn

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