5 comments about Queen: The Life and Music of Dinah Washington.

1. Oh Dear Dinah, your life & music deserves more than a mere listing of your shows and records in such a big collage(awfully long to read)of a book! I guess it is well researched but are magazine writings reliable? Not really.
   I DO know more about Washington, for sure...
   It is not the 1st book of the kind I read, certainly not the last but hopefully, not another one like this in the near future...



2. Because no one has ever written about legendary Dinah Washington before (at least not published in Europe),I snatched this book immediately just to find it a bit overwhelming & too detailed.Where author dazzled in her previous book,this time she seems she wasn't sure is she writting about Washington or the whole afro-american society of post WW2 America.Sure,she had done her homework and reasearched high and low (future authors will have to rely on her) but after a while,the book turns into list of every concert performance Washington ever gave in her life,therefore a bit dry.Strange how vital and exciting singer like Washington ended up with such uninspired biographer! The little episodes,like the only time this overworked woman spent time with her family in Disneyland tell much more than all the concerts and recording dates.I love Washington dearly and thanks to her music legacy,for me she lives forever.Read the book if you are curious,but stick to the music.



3. Dinah Washington, like Etta James and Esther Phillips, is one of the underrated singers of the post WWII era, and very little has been written about her. So when I saw this book and who its author was,(Nadine Cohodas, who wrote a superb history of Chess Records,Spinning Blues Into Gold), I eagerly anticipated reading it.
   After finishing it, unfortunately I'm still waiting for the definitive biography of the Queen. It's very apparent that Cohodas did a lot of research, but the result was turned into a laundry list of club dates, recording sessions, clothes inventories, and rotating musicians and husbands which becomes numbing. What is missing is context and interpretation of these events aside from the repetitive assertion that Washington was narrowly promoted and marketed because of race. I wasn't looking for sensationalism or psychobiography from this book, but I was hoping to gain some insight into Dinah Washington's life, or music, and the lack of analysis left me still wondering both who she was and how she created such wonderful music.



4. 
   Born Ruth Lee Jones in 1924 in Alabama, singer Dinah Washington's family moved to Chicago where she became a local gospel star at fifteen - but she didn't stop there. When she was discovered by Lionel Hampton at eighteen, Dinah made her way to New York's Apollo Theatre and became a legend. Queen: The Life And Music Of Dinah Washington reviews her life and music, delving into her high and low moments alike. A fine insider's guide to the real Dinah.



5. Dinah Washington was a great human being as well as a great singer. Cohodas' limited writing skills and lack of insight result in an unwieldy, superficial account of dates, places and people in the life of this passionately human, outstanding artist who was decades ahead of her time. On the other hand, the book provides significant documentation for future biographers. The book gets one star for the excellent cover by Carol Devine Carson who also designed the cover of Bill Clinton's autobiography. Dinah would have loved it!
   
   Given Dinah's magnificent talent, deep spirituality, and complex personality, only a highly skilled writer capable of penetrating social and psychological insights and access to personal materials could craft a biography worthy of her. Someone of the caliber of Toni Morrison, or Maya Angelou at her best, could do her justice. Until then, the brilliant light of Dinah's talents, generosity and love will continue to shine upon the earth bestowed - solo - by the Queen.

2 comments about Joe Louis: The Great Black Hope.

1. Richard Bak was born and raised in Detroit - the town where Joe Louis learned the sporting craft of boxing. He does a very good job in his biography of Joe Louis to capture the socio-political context of the events in the life of Joe Louis and to demonstrate how that context affected the decisions and actions of Joe Louis in his life and his boxing career.
   
   After 3 pages of acknowledgments and a prologue are 12 chapters: chapter 1) From `Bama to Black Bottom; chapter 2) A Punch in Either Hand; chapter 3) The Long Shadow of Papa Jack; chapter 4) No Ordinary Joe; chapter 5) Tan Tarzan, Black Messiah; chapter 6) Champion of All, Save One; chapter 7) Knocking Out Hitler; chapter 8) Bummin'; chapter 9) On God's Side; chapter 10) Cruel Twilight; chapter 11) No Joe Louis, No Jackie Robinson; and chapter 12) Your Whole Life is Your Funeral. These chapters are followed by a 3-paged appendix of Joe's Prize Fighting Ring Record, a 5-paged bibliography, and a 9-paged index. Altogether there are 320 pages between the covers with 58 photos.
   
   In chapter 1, we learn that Joe Louis was born Joe Louis Barrow in the desegregated State of Alabama. His stepfather relocated Joe and his family to the racist city of Detroit but with integrated schools where Ford was hiring and paying good wages. Joe had a speech impediment, was bored with schoolwork, but loved learning by doing - especially flag duty.
   
   In chapter 2, Joe had a percipient teacher who recommended that Joe enroll at vocational school where he could learn skills according to Joe's kinesthetic learning style. He also took up amateur boxing and eventually became the national AAU and Golden Gloves national champion. He compiled an amateur record of 50 wins (43 by knockout) and 4 losses.
   
   In chapter 3, Joe made the decision to become a prize fighter. When boxing for money, rules are not followed as they are in amateur boxing. So flagrant are the fixes and rules violations that it's best not to refer to prize fighting as boxing. Bak tells us about Jack Johnson and how he perfected his boxing craft while in jail for illegally prizefighting with his cellmate who had just knocked him out. Bak says that after Johnson became heavyweight champion of the world that he "inflamed public opinion with his open dalliances with women, including his second wife"(p53). Joe Louis's publicists gave Joe an opposite spin - "a God-fearing, Bible-reading, clean-living young man . . . neither a showoff nor a dummy" (p75).
   
   In chapter 4, Joe has his first prizefight on the 4th of July, 1934. One week later, Joe fought his second fight. Eventually, Joe caught the attention of Jewish-American fight promoter Mike Jacobs. Joe said in his autobiography - "If it wasn't for Mike Jacobs I would never have got to be champion" (p87). In this chapter, Joe demolished the Italian giant Primo Carnera at the time when Mussolini had just invaded the starving land of Ethiopia while waving white superiority. Joe Louis gave Mussolini a black eye.
   
   Chapter 5 explains how "Joe's handlers understood that it was crucial to develop and maintain a favorable public image in order to win acceptance by white America" (p110).
   
   In chapter 6, we learn that German fighter Max Schmeling was making a comeback and that Hitler did not want the heavyweight champion - Jewish-American Max Baer, fighting Schmeling and possibly giving Hiter and his theory of white supremacy a black eye like Mussolini suffered when Joe Louis knocked out Primo Carnera. Instead, Schmeling fought Joe Louis. Schmeling was confident that he could defeat Louis, saying "I see something" - he saw how Joe dropped his left after a jab and was subsequently open for a right cross. In their fight, Schmeling dropped Joe several times before delivering the knockout. Fight announcers downplayed any notions of white supremacy but many in the audience were giving voice to it. Back in Germany, Hitler and his Nazis were ecstatic. Schmeling was not allowed by U.S. boxing officials to fight for the heavyweight title at that time. Meanwhile Joe bounced back quickly and eventually knocked out Braddock to become the heavyweight champion of the world.
   
   In chapter 7, Joe had his rematch with Schmeling where he knocked him out in the first round after hitting him so hard to the body that he squealed like a pig. Hitler was humiliated and Joe became America's boxing patriot.
   
   In chapter 8, Joe fought a series of `bums'. In 1936, he paused to go to Hollywood to make a boxing film for the Jewish-American cartel called "Spirit of Youth". Here Bak reveals Joe's penchant for white women and the collusion among the black media to hide his indiscretions from the white public.
   
   In chapter 9, Bak makes short shrift of the Louis-Conn fight. And he doesn't say a word about FDR provoking the Japanese to retaliate, which they did at Pearl Harbor. Nor does he say that Winston Churchill came up with the Pearl Harbor plan in order to suck America back into the second part of the World War. Americans were opposed to making the mistake they had made in the first part of the World War, which was to ignore Thomas Jefferson's maxim of "peace and friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none". But after FDR allowed the Japanese to hit U.S. naval ships at Pearl Harbor, Americans went war crazy. Joe said "I was mad, I was furious, you name it" (p203). Joe and Billy Conn joined the Army as enlisted, while non-Irish white boxers were made officers. Joe and Billy gave boxing exhibitions while Joe noted Billy's weaknesses for a future rematch after the war.
   
   The remaining chapters tell a tragic story of Joe's fight with the IRS. It's a story where he continually gets pummeled with interest and penalties until he marries Martha Malone Jefferson, California's first black female lawyer, and she gets the IRS to stop hounding him although they never erased the debt. And after he died, the government buried his body in their cemetery at Arlington.
   
   There is also the story of how Joe panicked after the mob killed his friend Sonny Liston. Bak doesn't tell us that Joe had to hide out in a Denver psychiatric hospital in order to be safe from the mob, while his wife convinced the mob that his "paranoid delusions" would discredit him if he ever repeated anything that Liston had told him.
   
   In short, Bak did a great job dealing with a symbol of black power, a symbol of nationalism, and a man with many weaknesses outside of the ring. I am humbled to review this.



2. This is an outstanding book. It's enlightening entertaining and very enjoyable. JL's life from early childhood in Alabama to his youth in Detroit is clearly written. His amateur career is well documented as are all his professional fights. His boxing coterie and family life are also well drawn. I didn't know much about JL before reading this book, but I came away liking him very much and obviously respecting his boxing abilities. Mr. Bak has written an instructive and very enlightening book.

5 comments about The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart.

1. I picked this book up from my local library after having read a book of poetry by Walker. The poetry was very unique and full of rarely experienced perspectives on being an American of Color. I grabbed this book because the title is evocative of spiritual growth. What I found is a book totally devoid of any redeeming spirituality. There were excerpts from Walkers sexual history which I could have done without reading. This book read like an awful diary than was meant to be thrown away but, was found.......by an enemy intending to stab you in the back! What surprises me is, the fact that this garbage was published at all. It is a bunch of senseless ramblings. The title is very misleading. If you like to make comparisons then, this definitely more Anais Nin than Shirley MacLaine!



2. I happened across Alice's latest while seeking something, anything to read during the weekend immediately after September 11. The introduction simultaneously broke my heart and gave me hope for a better tomorrow. Once I got home, I immediately typed up the majority of the introduction and sent it onto my friends. Many responded thanking me for sending this onto them.

   While many of the other reviewers are correct in saying that some of the stories are difficult to understand and others scattered and incosistent, I find this part of the books charm. It is unvarnished, sometimes very thoughtful, other times angry, and still other times conciliatory. In short...it is very real.

   If you don't want to think and be challenged, avoid the book. If you want a challenge, pick it up. Nobody says you have to agree with it all, but I for one am thankful that a person such as Alice is willing to bare her soul in such a way that is so provocotive.

   I am honestly a bit surprised by the venom of some of the reviews.




3. The conversational tone with which this book is written is delightful. You feel like you're having an intimate chat with Alice over a hot cup of coffee, and that's cozy enough. Problem is, she takes a perfectly good beginning (I can hear LTD's "Where Did We Go Wrong" playin' in the background...)and adds to it perfectly confusing detours. I think the story would have read much better had she added no fiction at all. Most want to hear the truth of it all -- or so it seems to me -- more of the life story of this love union and its subsequent heartbreaking end. Who among us hasn't ever struggled over the disbelief that what was once so right somehow slipped through our fingers like oil? Alice is rich and raw in her expression, and her candor is admirable. But the added fiction to a moving memoir is, particularly when the names and circumstances of the ficticious characters keep tripping over themselves, questionable at best. If you're feeling experimental, go ahead and try it. Otherwise, I'd suggest you stick to more authentic, unclouded memoirs.



4. ..................that analyze the experience of romantic love in all its complex forms. As only Alice Walker can do, with such convincing story lines, common elements of romantic love are demonstrated in stories about transracial, gay/lesbian, rich and poor, educated and less educated couples. Walker shows us how superficial circumstances may differ, while preserving those characteristics of relationships that are common to us all. In doing so she breaks down stereotypes and we come to see her characters as human beings who are just like ourselves.



5. I guess a celebrated author such as Walker can receive accolades from a book that is vague to the point of being- pointless.

   With the exception of the first story about her failed marraige, the rest of these stories don't make a whole lot of sense.

5 comments about The Good Black.

1. I think Paul Barrett does a brilliant job telling the story, particularly in the way he presents every single issue and weakness, not just Mungin's issues or the firm's weaknesses. He does not clearly take Mungin's side throughout the whole book, even in the conclusion. Some might disagree, but the conclusion appears to me as Barrett giving his analysis of Mungin's situation with the firm from the perspective of one with a law degree. To be honest with you, I think Barrett should have represented Mungin--Barrett has a right-on understanding of the case and the situation and makes several points that Mungin's lawyer should have made. As a law student, I had been reading the chapters detailing the courtroom experience, wondering why Mungin's lawyer Hairston was not bottom-lining the situation by saying that Mungin was enthusiastically hired to be a token, not to do work of substance for Katten Muchin. In the end, Barrett hit that point on the head--Mungin was simply a token to Katten Muchin. They brought him in, paid him to do next to nothing and then didn't want to let him go even though there was next to no work for him to do, while they let other whites go...because they knew they would be losing a token and losing in the minority retention game. Mungin's lawyer acted like she couldn't figure any of this out, among other questions she should have been able to answer during the trials, or answered but could have answered better. She had to know that she was going to be questioned about why Katten Muchin would hire Mungin because of race and then discriminate against him. She is part of the reason why he lost one of the two trials surrounding this case, the other parts being there was no in-your-face racism and the judges being conservatives hell-bent against finding racism in the situation. In the other trial, which Mungin did win, it was not at all because his lawyer was so good...it had more to do with the defense lawyer being awful and the jury being black, except for one person. I'll leave those who haven't read the book yet to read it and find out which trial he won and which one he lost.
   
   The problem with proving racism in this situation is not so much that the racism is so subtle as it is that the situation was so complex. It was a huge mess. And Katten Muchin was not the only one making mistakes that added to the complexity, their biggest being letting Dombroff have his way all the time, particularly with starting a bankruptcy department when there is little bankruptcy work in DC...Mungin made TONS of mistakes and, in my opinion, added to his own pain and suffering. He didn't even have to take a job with Katten Muchin, for starters, and there were tons of warning signals that he SHOULDN'T take a job with Katten Muchin. He dismissed every signal, as noted by Barrett. Mungin is someone, as shown throughout the entire book in several different instances, who is too headstrong for his own good and who has awful judgment, from picking law firms to work for right down to picking law firms to take his case. Mungin is described several times by several people, including the author, as arrogant, and that arrogance was a huge part of his downfall. Even Mungin himself knew he was an arrogant son-of-a-gun heading for a fall--he wrote his own autobiography for his eyes only long before the lawsuit saying so. Katten Muchin in DC was a firm with no blacks--he knew this. Katten Muchin in general had issues with retention of minorities, a racial discrimination lawsuit going on in Chicago, a history of sexual harassment complaints. Had he done some research, he would have learned some of these things. It was a firm that was not on his--or many other people's--radar when it was suggested to him. He had other firms wanting to hire him at the time and bring him in as partner, whereas Katten Muchin merely made a vague promise to consider him for partner after one year. Others more in the know about Katten Muchin knew they were having issues, including possible finance or management problems and problems with a jerk DC partner, Dombroff. But Mungin just does not listen.
   
   I believe that no one intentionally discriminated against Mungin, and that's one of the reasons the four lawyers in Katten Muchin he originally singled out in his lawsuit were dismissed. I want to mention here that I am black. I read the situation as unconscious or subsconscious discrimination, which is quite possibly the reason why the lawyers at Katten Muchin originally singled out firmly believed they had done nothing wrong and why the white conservative judges in one of Mungin's lawsuits could not see any wrongdoing that was racially related. The kind of discrimination Mungin experienced is the kind of discrimination blacks experience all the time in various situations and in law firms across the country, not just Katten Muchin. More or less, Mungin was overlooked at the law firm, or, as it was put several times, he "fell through the cracks." Well, white people routinely overlook black people, without even thinking about it or meaning to (I go through this on a daily basis, particularly when I am in school). The majority of whites (and even other non-blacks) in the US just LOOK...RIGHT...THROUGH...BLACKS. And they can't see that they do this or that another white person has done it because it is such a way of life to white people, so ingrained, that they don't realize they do this. That's what Mungin experienced, and his experience was a similar kind of unconscious or subconscious racism as how every day blacks attend schools with whites and yet relatively few whites will speak to them, become friends with them, date them, choose to work with them on assignments or projects, join them at the lunch table, etc...and think nothing of it or see nothing wrong with their actions, or lack of actions. Similarly, Mungin was never invited to meetings. Seemingly, not many people within Katten Muchin knew why he worked there or what he did there. The ones who did, did not seem very interested in helping him out and ultimately decided not to--or "forgot" to--consider him for partner or evaluate his work. Their explanation for not living up to promises to help Mungin was that Mungin was supposed to help himself by bringing in work himself. Hairston never argued this, which she should have, but that was not the point--the point was they PROMISED to and just did not do it. Sure, he should have been out there hustling for work, but these people said they would steer work his way. Instead, they gave DC work to whites in Chicago to do when black Mungin in DC could have done it--AFTER being promised he would get work such as that given to whites all the way in Chicago. Like I said before, they simply did not want Mungin to work, probably did not trust Mungin to work, on complex assignments...though they never said as much because Mungin had never actually screwed up any assignments he'd done, so they wouldn't have a legitimate reason to say it. They couldn't say, "Oh, he's merely our token, so we can claim he's a partner in our DC bankruptcy office when he really isn't and never will be...we just want to look like we have blacks and black partners."
   
   The way law firms work is if a partner likes you enough, they will help you in any way they can--they will give you more work than other associates at the firm. Nobody liked Mungin enough to keep promises made to him. They gave assignments to white males in Chicago because they liked the white males in Chicago. Now, he could very well have been overlooked, not because of race, but because he was in a practice that was absolutely nothing to Katten Muchin. Or, as the firm argued, it might have been because they simply mistreated everyone (though not anyone quite the same way as Mungin), particularly in the DC office where Dombroff harmed many a career, including Mungin's at least to a certain degree if not entirely. Law firms across the board mistreat associates in one way or the other. There's no telling--read and decide for yourself.
   
   I would say it's hard to come away from this book feeling sorry for Mungin because of the brilliant way Barrett lays everything out on the line. Aside from being arrogant and hardheaded, Mungin very much bordered on being the kind of black who just didn't want to be black. He didn't want to be associated with other blacks, not even blacks coming into the law firm. He always seemed ashamed of his background, with the exception of his stint in the Navy and degrees from Harvard. I don't think he dated black females, and it seems as if most of his friends throughout his life were white. He seemed to be of the mindset that if he set himself away from blacks and did things that, in his mind, were respected by whites, whites would accept him and he would have a great career making a lot of money. He was very self-centered and money-hungry and had a lot of characteristics typical of a white male, particularly a white male professional. The book is called "The Good Black" for that reason--he was always desperate to prove to whites that he was a "good black," but I think he did not only look down on dangerous or more negatively stereotypical blacks...as hinted at by the fact that he wanted little or nothing to do with blacks coming in behind him, even as a mentor. He ignored race at all costs, which built up rage inside of him, and this continued at Katten Muchin. He screwed up by letting the white people run over him there, simply because he did not want to be thought of as a "problem black" or confirm that he fits white stereotypes of blacks...for all the good that did. Eventually, his letting the whites run over him hurt him in several ways, from the trial (i.e. why didn't you tell anyone about XY treatment) to his sense of identity. I think the situation with Katten Muchin was exactly what Mungin needed as a wake-up call and to discover who he really is--these kinds of things always happen to the most naive black people, because they are the ones who need these things to happen.
   
   In that sense, I would say the book, while not providing any sort of answer for how we can make race relations better in this country (or, for that matter, make law firms better), does have a happy ending. In the end, he told Barrett something to the effect of, "Don't be surprised if you visit me and I have a wife and kids." He came to know what was really important--not partnership in a law firm, acceptance by whites, looking out for #1 and money...but family and support, self-assurance and true happiness.



2. As one interested in the law, I really enjoyed this book. But I also found it hard to empathize with the author. I agree that a lot of discrimination within the workplace still exists in the United States, but much of this book came across to me as "whining" why the other guy (who happens to be white) makes 115,000 a year, while he (the black author) "only" makes 95,000 a year. Discrimination? Perhaps, but he is still better off (regardless of if he'll ever make partner at some firm or not) than the vast majority of Americans, or people across the world for that matter. "The Good Black" is just another chapter in America's continuing struggle with race.



3. After graduating from Harvard College, Mungin was determined to gain admission to Harvard Law School and to achieve status and wealth by gaining partnership in a big city law firm. Unfortunately, he never made it. Barrett, his Harvard Law School roommate, tells Mungin's story with remarkable insight and sympathy. In truth, Mungin was a less than distinguished law student, a less than enthusiastic lawyer, and a less than happily adjusted person. Yet given his abilities and credentials, it is hard to believe that Mungin would not have made partner at one of the four firms he tried, had he not been black. That is what an entirely black jury in the District of Columbia concluded in awarding him 2.5 million dollars. And yet the racism at Mungin's last firm was subtle and unintended. Mungin should have further persisted if the brass ring was all that counted. Are we as a society to award compensation to everyone who fails to reach their highest ambition when--as JFK found it so easy to say--"life is not fair?" The court of appeals decided otherwise. To my mind, Barrett has, perhaps unintentionally, very powerfully illustrated why.



4. I knew Larry and the inner workings of the firm to which he refers. His treatment was not a figment of his imagination, and the firm did not treat everyone with equal rudeness. There was and is a subtle distinction in how those of color are treated, particularly at the professional level. Mungin's accountings regarding his discrimination by a powerhouse firm were poignant, as is his self rediscovery. Albeit idealistic, he was most mistaken in his belief that stripping away all point of reference to common stereotypes would assist him in ascent to the top legal echelons.

   While I appreciate the objectivity with which Barrett pursued the case and Mungin's cultural dynamic, his perspective can never truly encapsulate the very real experience one encounters at KMZ. The mere fact that a partner "anonymously" characterizes black employees of Ivy standing as "affirmative action failures" indicates the pervasive level of assumptions made regarding one's true capability, or why those students are actually admitted. One has to climb and claw not once or twice, but continually through a maze of prejudgment, dehumanization and subtle disparity in treatment.

   Thanks for telling a story which needs to be told, again and again.




5. It's obvious that Larry Mungin was treated wrong at his law firm. The book details every humiliation that was dished out to him but was it old fashioned racism or was it simply rude and rough lawyer culture? The book is very well written but it never delivers the slam dunk. At the end you still have the question: Racism or hubris?

3 comments about Thelonious Monk: His Life and Music.

1. This is a very well written concise biography of Monk that is comprehensive enough to foster an understanding of his influences and the music and cultural scene in which he emerged. It is thoroughly researched and doesn't bog down in trivial detail the way many iconographic bios do. About one third of the book consists of a comprhensive discography which is notable for it's objectivity in reviewing all of Monk's recordings. This would be very helpful to anyone looking to begin or expand their Monk collection. The musicians that played with Monk in various sessions are all covered and the circumstances surrounding most of the recordings are adequately described.
   All in all I think this is a wonderful reference for the jazz lover and a good overview of the life and work of one of the all-time great jazz musicians.



2. Only about a third of this volume is alloted for Monk's life--which is not bad; the rest is about the various recordings he made.

   You get enough to wet your appetite. Makes you want to look for something more indepth, etc. Worth buying, though, as it is written by a genuine fan of Monk and the whole jazz scene. I don't regret getting it.




3. This book is really good...especially if you own or plan to collect Monks music.The first part gives a brief(100 pages)bio(more expanded in gourse's "straight no chaser")a decent overveiw.The second part explains more or less "the Monk sound"his style in understandable terms(terms are also explained.) The third part is the best...monk on disk(and vinyl) and all sessions and personnel(all confirmed) in chronological order.Very excellent if you are obsessed like i am about this kind of stuff. It covers all this extremely well with much commentary.In depth even. If you got Monk on record this is a great reference.The focus on the music is its strong point.

No comments about Willie Mae (Brown Thrasher Books).

1 comments about Dark Designs and Visual Culture.

1. I read this collection of essays last summer, and I'm impressed with Wallace's balanced analyses of popular culture and cinema past and present. Wallace is an astute critic and scholar, but what astounded me were the early chapters that centered on her life. She should publish a memoir, as she has an acute ability to draw the reader into her personal life.
   However, I do have one criticism. I do not like the way she handled bell hooks, and I'm not talking about Wallace's essays on the self-proclaimed diva of Black Feminism. In the early chapters, Wallace apologizes for writing the pieces on hooks, which undermines the excellent essays. The tone of Wallace's apology comes across as forced and insincere. bell hooks trashes everybody, and she has NEVER apologized or regretted a word she has put on paper. Just as Postcolonial critic Sara Suleri did a decade ago when she chastised hooks, Wallace should have stuck to her guns...Nonetheless, the essays on hooks are provocative, valid, and downright juicy.

4 comments about Lala's Story: A Memoir of the Holocaust (Jewish Lives-Memoir).

1. This memoir, rich in texture and detail, reflects the extensive research the protagonist's co-author, Steven Weingartner, seems to have done in preparation for writing this work (since so much of the history and background recalled here would have been beyond the ken of Lala Fishman, the story's narrator). The authors trace Ms. Fishman's family roots, from what was then the Ukraine into the Poland of that era, and provide, in remarkably vivid detail, a picture of what it was like to live through two back-to-back invasions of Poland: the joint Nazi-Soviet attacks of 1939 followed by the treacherous Nazi thrust against Stalin's Soviet Union in 1941. For Jews like Fishman, the advent of the Nazis into eastern Poland made a trying situation, under Communist rule, infinitely worse as the Nazis systematically undertook to exterminate the Jews.
   
   Fishman recalls both the telling details and her own reflections as the Nazi terror swirled around her. From the initial indignities of Nazi restrictions on the Jewish population, to the construction of the ghetto and the unpredictable "actions" that swept Jews indiscriminately off the streets and into oblivion, to the whittling away of her own family members, one by one, as they are taken in the "actions," Fishman describes the growing sense of dread and helplessness that overwhelmed the Jews she knew. Witness to brutal hangings of Jews by Gestapo soldiers in the streets, arrested more than once herself, Fishman, on the verge of adulthood, finally recognizes that no help is coming and that there can be only one end to it all.
   
   "It's a trap," she tells her distraught father and mother when the Nazis initially press them to enter the ghetto, a place to get all the Jews together she insists so they can finish them off. Her family, heeding her words, stays put for as long as they can. But they can't hold out forever and Fishman must finally flee the city of Lvov with what's left of her family (her broken mother and nine year old sister) after her uncles and father disappear and her elderly grandmother is grabbed from their apartment in a surprise Nazi raid.
   
   But flight alone is barely enough, for Fishman can't escape the cruelties of the Nazis and their Ukrainian minions, nor the cold anti-Semitism of many Poles. Yet it's through other Poles, men and women of good will, that Fishman is finally enabled to survive. Relying on false papers and the training in Catholic ritual and teaching she receives in a crash course from Catholic friends, Fishman contrives to "pass" as a Catholic Polish girl. Still, she is taken and beaten by Nazi interrogators, stripped to her underwear for their inspection and finally, on winning a temporary reprieve, flees into the nearby countryside as the Gestapo pursue her and a friend. The journey takes Fishman into a new life, one of deception and paranoia where she must constantly live with the memory of her lost family, including the broken spirited mother and terrified nine year old sister she was forced to abandon to save herself.
   
   Sometimes, though, there's almost too much research here, too much detail about things Fishman could not have known while she was living it all. But the episodes of flight and survival recalled by Fishman, and recounted here, make this story a valuable window into an era which saw the brutal eradication of Europe's Jews.
   
   SWM
   
   co-author of A Raft on the River the story of a young girl's coming of age in the shadow of the Holocaust in eastern Poland between 1939 and 1945
   
   editor of Bitter Freedom: Memoirs of a Holocaust Survivor



2. This is a story of a young women being persued by the Nazi's and her ability to get away from them. She was brought to jail for questioning but with a great deal of bravery she was able to get away. A MUST READ.



3. I couldn't put the book down until I read the last page. An exciting adventure of a young lady trying to avoid the Nazi's.



4. Great book--exciting reading and has kept me up all evening until I completed it.

No comments about Constant Struggle: African-american History 1865-present.

1 comments about Diary of an Immigrant: In Pursuit of the American Dream.

1. It is exactly what you thought it would be. The story of an immigrant who traveled to the US. It is Ibrahim's story, yet similar to mine and yours. This memoir is written as a letter to the writer's parent back home in Nigeria. It however can be addressed to anybody anywhere in the world, even here in America since he is just telling his story.
   
   This is a must read for African immigrants across the globe and any non-African that is interested. It is great to have our stories on print, raw with total honesty. The diary of an Immigrant is about education, endurance, determination and humor. Yes, I laughed so hard when the writer said he went to the store and bought a cat food. He thought that it was some type of snack made for humans to eat. This book will make you ponder on some issues that affect our community. Reading this book left me with a lot to think about. I would definitely RECOMMEND that you give it a read.