Book Description
Manchild in the Promised Land is indeed one of the most remarkable autobiographies of our time. This thinly fictionalized account of Claude Brown's childhood as a hardened, streetwise criminal trying to survive the toughest streets of Harlem has been heralded as the definitive account of everyday life for the first generation of African Americans raised in the Northern ghettos of the 1940s and 1950s. When the book was first published in 1965, it was praised for its realistic portrayal of Harlem -- the children, young people, hardworking parents; the hustlers, drug dealers, prostitutes, and numbers runners; the police; the violence, sex, and humor. The book continues to resonate generations later, not only because of its fierce and dignified anger, not only because the struggles of urban youth are as deeply felt today as they were in Brown's time, but also because the book is affirmative and inspiring. Here is the story about the one who "made it," the boy who kept landing on his feet and became a man.
Customer Reviews:
Manchild In the Promised Land.......2007-08-26
I was able to find this book relatively easy, based on a few keywords. My boyfriend started reading it several years ago and was unable to complete it. The storyline stuck in his memory and I bought it as a surprise for him, because over the years he mentioned it occasionally. Thanks for making the lookup so easy!
Will definitely reread..........2007-07-05
This book made such an impact on me when I read it the first time. I was in high school in New Jersey in the early '70's and had friends in Harlem so I visited often. To read such a vivid portrait of a young life at that time in New York City felt real for me. Claude Brown's writing influenced me at an early age. This work is a masterpiece and will stand the test of time.
Hyper-detailed looked into Harlem decades ago.......2007-04-03
Brown leaves no stone unturned when it comes to his life in New York. The Howard University graduate covers the story of the first generation of Southerners (his parents) that left to New York-the "promised land" where they expected to enjoy equality and prosperity. Instead, they were forced to deal with overcrowded living spaces and violent ghettos. He paints a picture of his rugged coming of age with vivid recollections of how he gained his rep as a brawler, the friendships gained and lost due to drugs and violence, as well as his fight to escape the seemingly hopeless condition that Harlem was trapped in at the time. After surviving run-ins with the law, brutal fights and the ravages of drug abuse, one can only hope to have half the mental toughness that Brown had to rise above his circumstances.
Through the eyes of a ghetto child circa 50's Harlem.......2007-03-04
Claude Brown quite literally puts his life time between the paper's line[just to quote Mobb Deep] exposing us to the world of Harlem circa the early 1950's. The story definately has universal appeal to all children that have been spawned from the depths of ghetto despair. What Claude reveals to the general reader is that even a ghetto child destined to either a prison block or pine box can rise above and accomplish what they will.
The book functions as a autobigraphical novel,socilogical story,and psychological observation. All the following can be gleaned from Claude's Manchild in the Promised Land. Every other view we get of the ghetto comes from exagerated gangsta rap lyrics or second hand suburban reserchers. Clude provides us with a realistic depiction from single parent households down to street hustlers that flood the block with heroin.
The Harlem of the 50's-60's definately sounds alot like the inner city realities of today even at 2007. While Claude was able to escape the trap, you have to wonder how many ghetto youth today are just simply a victim of their own enviroment. How many Claude Browns are there in every inner city that don't live to tell their story or do so behind iron bars? The sadness is that such conditions have only became worse since Manchild in the Promised Land was published in the 60's.
Before Brown's death he planned a sequel to his previous work detailing experiances of the 80's generation and how crack cocaine devistated Harlem much like heroin did in the 50's-70's.
captivating.......2006-03-08
this book changed my life in a way... not that i have similar experiences or grew up in that time because i'm only 24. This was an excellent book all the way but it did a little more for me. This is one of those books that touched me and will always get praise. My mother was an addict and up until i read this book i held a grudge because she left me at the age of 5. This book made me understand the mind of an addict and that she would have probably the best mother in the world if it were not for the drugs. I understood the control drugs had over people and my mom. The book wasnt just about drugs but you can overcome and rise from the evils of the world. But for me this book made me forgive my mother.
Average customer rating:
- Another Key Spenser Novel
- Strong prose, well written
- It isn't all Braising Bullets and Bad Ape Booze. The P.I. guy runs a Jazz/Blues scene. Ya gotta have moaning melancholy ...
- Promised Land
- Women's rights
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Promised Land
Robert Parker
Manufacturer: Dell
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ASIN: 0440171970
Release Date: 1992-12-05 |
Book Description
Spenser is good at finding things. But this time he has a client out on Cape Cod who is in over his head. Harvey Shepard has lost his pretty wife -- and a very pretty quarter million bucks in real estate. Now a loan shark is putting on the bite.
Spenser finds himself doing a slow burn in the Cape Cod sun. The wife has turned up as a hot suspect in a case of murder one...the in-hock hubby has 24 hours before the mob makes him dead...and suddenly Spenser is in so deep that the only way out is so risky it makes dying look like a sure thing.
"Spenser is the sassiest, funniest, most-enjoyable-to-read private eye around today." (The Cincinnati Post)
Download Description
Spenser is back. The fourth novel featuring the wisecracking boxer-turned private-detective finds him investigating a marriage in turmoil, a shady business deal, a nefarious loan shark and, of course, a murder. The real charm of the book, however, is Spenser himself, his inimitable wit, his keen grasp of human nature, his love of food and good beer, and his reluctant but capable fists.
Customer Reviews:
Another Key Spenser Novel.......2007-09-06
PROMISED LAND is the fourth Spenser novel, and definitely one of the better ones. The plotline deals with Spenser trying to find a runaway wife, only to discover that the husband who hired him has some very serious problems of his own.
This novel is important for two reasons. First, it introduces the character of Hawk, who would later become a key figure in the series. Second, this is the first novel to fully define the parameters of Spenser's relationship with his girlfriend, Susan Silverman. This book is therefore a must read for fans of the Spenser series.
PROMISED LAND has a relatively strong plot with an exciting conclusion. But this is also the first Spenser novel with a big philosophical component. Many of the characters have long, thoughtful dialogues about the nature of love, commitment and marriage. While many of these exchanges are interesting, most of them are overlong and struck me as stilted and unrealistic. I knock off a star for this reason.
You can read the Spenser novels in any order, but I personally believe the earlier ones should be read first. So my advice is to read this novel, along with GOD SAVE THE CHILD as your first Spenser books.
Highly recommended.
Strong prose, well written.......2007-05-25
The prose is well-written, the characterizations are vivid and the whole story fits together like a hand in a glove. That said, much of the book is filled with rhetorical politicalization - which, admittedly, was much the topic of the day - that became a bit thick at times. I don't know many people who actually hold conversations like those held in the book. Again, although I lived through those times, I was very young - so maybe people DID talk like that back then. Anyway, the constant rhetoric rubbed me the wrong way after awhile, reducing my enjoyment of the story after awhile.
However, I love the way Robert Parker describes characters and actions, and I love Spenser's internal dialog. Hawk was an awesome new character and I hope we run into him again. Despite its faults, this was a book that I enjoyed reading overall, and recommend to anyone who enjoys PI novels with a bit of intelligence behind them.
*disclaimer* written in the middle of the night under the influence of medications that make me stupid dumb*
It isn't all Braising Bullets and Bad Ape Booze. The P.I. guy runs a Jazz/Blues scene. Ya gotta have moaning melancholy ... .......2006-09-06
Ya gotta have moaning melancholy ... and ... and ... thoughtful, teaching t'ings.
For me, this # 4 in Parker's Spenser series was a key novel, a turning point for honing purpose and direction for future offerings. With PROMISED LAND, the baseline ingredients were set. It almost seemed to me as if, in writing the early parts of this plot, Parker had scrambled to the top of a mountain and surveyed the territory he had acquired in his first three books. "I've clearly opened something successfully long-term here," he might have concluded. "What do I want to do with it. Where do I want to take it."
A third into the plot of PROMISED LAND, a short paragraph from Spenser's narrative soured a trumped-up deal, like flat beer worn down:
>> Living around Boston for a long time you tend to think of Cape Cod as promised land. Sea, sun, sky, health, ease, boisterous camaraderie, a kind of real-life beer commercial. Since I'd arrived no one had liked me, and several people had told me to go away. Two had assaulted me. You're sure to fall in love with old Cape Cod.
<<
Of course Hawk's arrival to the series, as many reviews have eloquently heralded, was highly effective and welcome, though I had anticipated a "love at first sight" First Meeting between Spenser and Hawk. As I thought about it, though, I was impressed with the thematic effect of Hawk being introduced as someone not yet integrated, but long significant in Spenser's life. As Spenser explained more than once here:
"I've known him a long time."
Yet, it wasn't until "now" that the relationship between these two machismo (in the detoxified, good sense of the term) males seeded and began growing into ... a black-and-white-Knight ... chess set ... a pair of large oak trees ...
Well, okay, since these guys were self-mobile (and too cool) maybe I should get off the mangled-metaphor kick, and be trite-but-right in terming them Super Heroes. But, in fact, they were more like genetically pure, human males, evolved beyond ape without losing the pheromones.
One of my favorite paragraphs in the Spenser novels (those which I've read so far) was in PROMISED LAND, and has this line in it:
>> There ain't all that many of us left, guys like old Spenser and me.
<<
The paragraph from which that line was lifted, and the way it played from the previous scene, brought a moan of acknowledgment up from the soul, tears to the eyelids. If that statement was spirit-level-true in 1976 when the book was copyrighted, how much truer (and more devastating) would it be today.
One of the ingredients noted above, which came through here as a commitment in the Spenser series, was that it was going to deal dramatically with various sociological and psychological issues (which definitely related to machismo, etc.). The seventies were the "Time" in which both those fields of study of human behavior had come into prime, in a growing acknowledgment from the masses. In the early seventies, I was fresh out of college (actually I was weathered, withered, and wilted, but still wide-eyed), breaking in the graduate psychology and philosophy seminars I had worked through, becoming acquainted for the first time, along with the rest of the world, with the differences among those idealized "-ologies"; becoming intimately acquainted with the unique definitions and uses of each.
Self-help books had just begun bulging commercial bookshelves, bombing and bumbling outward into the cultural scenes.
It might be interesting to note, though, that to recommend therapy to anyone in that era wasn't as "old hat" as it is today, when probably 70% of the US population has at least considered that option, if not been decades into such a Freudian deal of paying a professional "ear" (similar to a private "eye") into which to pour personal woes dredged up from the toes. And now we have Winfrey, Dr. Phil, and scuds of Prozac pills. Who woulda thunk? Burp. Overdosing has become a constant; not a constant threat, just a constant.
Sometimes it appears to me that, since the time of that primal-pivot-70's era, the human -ologies have become polluted by the very seas of social ills they were instigated to cure. Unfortunately, instead of a cure, maybe we've had a nurturing of the complicated foolishness we humans have imposed upon ourselves (pushed `n packed into our cases of emotional baskets).
But, in PROMISED LAND, Spenser's descriptions of how that "system" was supposed to work are "Right on!" from my perspective.
He quoted from Robert Frost as advising, in essence, that a man must get behind his Father's sayings, must evaluate them for himself, must begin drawing his own conclusions about who he is and what he wants his (personal) world to become. The implication there (in this novel's plot) was that when personal worlds were in working order, The Greater World, "The Causes," would become moot points (Thank God, or Whomever!); or, at least, would become functioning, well-oiled, strongly founded points of sanity and security.
Interestingly, Susan was using the Frost quote (I had flashed to the talk-show host instead of the poet) to explain one of the social issues brought out in this novel with such painful, yet cheer-inducing clarity, that of the budding of militant Feminism, its time of seeding, rooting, and blossoming ... barbs, thorns, and machine guns ... with roses and truth crushed, bruised, brutalized, omitted or deleted. Susan was using the Robert Frost (with bite) line to show how woman, especially housewives, needed to "come of age" or to begin evaluating what they were taught by parents, often through eons-concretized, self-perpetuating-auto-behaviors, more than through specific words, phrases, or beliefs.
What I liked about Susan in this one was that she could realize she was wrong; be hit upside-the-head (symbolically) by Spenser; then come up to speed, without wasting a split-second feeling foolish. Once she got that she was off base (maybe mildewed) in her thoughts; she slipped into a quick and total, "Oh, I see," and began skipping to the true tune without missing more than a few beats. She may have been entertainingly outspoken and opinionated, but she didn't allow herself to stay stuck or stale.
Moving on into the plot, I want to mention that the points were beautifully "telling" (and very well taken by me) which Parker made around the murder of the old guard at the bank (which I might type as "Old Guard" to pile on more meaning).
There was also a good amount of tension between Spenser and Susan here, a cool (and hot) dancing-around-issues on how to be "together," all of which played beautifully off the sociologically-wounded-married-couple in this plot, intriguingly named Pam and Harvey Shepard.
I've noticed in a few interesting comments in Spenser's blog on Amazon, comments from housewives (I'm proud to say I am one, by choice) wondering why Parker doesn't like their "breed." Actually, in this novel, I felt that The Housewife, Pam Shepard, was a heroic figure, used well fictionally to expose the type of growth possible through gutsy choices, when they continued to move onward instead of to solidify into militant ignorance (thanks to Spenser).
I also enjoyed the clarity here of what Spenser felt about anyone (man, woman, or in-between) suddenly dropping responsibilities to children, and skipping out on Walk About (to "find" oneself).
Parker exquisitely laid bare the various sides of sociological and psychological issues as they played into his individual characters and their ongoing lives. His brand of "analysis" (soul searching), expressed amazingly clearly in this novel, I could get behind. It allowed a person to responsibly go beyond whatever may have been blocking his/her life from "doing its (True & Intended) thing."
PROMISED LAND was the absolute perfect title for this novel. Parker's rhythm and stride had arrived (though the first 3 novels were perfect in their own right); he was committed to dance and stretch through what evolved into 3 decades with Spenser, Susan, and Hawk. (Possibly his publishers had begun realizing Parker's unique potential by then and were wisely clamoring for continuation.)
As I've said in previous reviews of this landmark series (see my two-part Listmania); it is one of the best treatises I've found on our US cultural evolution, from perspectives including and beyond the various -ologicals. To have that worked seamlessly into the high entertainment of a mood-rich detective series is a steal on steel.
What I dread more than "guys like us" (Spenser and Hawk) going extinct, is the day when no one will be able to comprehend, let alone remember, who they were, what they stood for.
Who ... was ... John Galt?
Learn this. Know it. Remember it.
Or else!
Or, our species will not be worth the Sacred Fertilizer (my term for Holy Sh...) we're churning out with too many "-isms" and not enough sense; with too much seeking of "safety in numbers" (though I believe in the necessity of our well-trained military, and am beyond thankful for their dedication, diligence, and expertise) and not enough singularity of sanity.
With Respect (and hope) for our species, a respect which sometimes flickers and dims, but my Rose Tints still work,
Linda Shelnutt
Promised Land.......2005-09-09
Any of Parker's books are excellent, I usually read then in less then 3 days. Promised Land is just another excellent read, you won't be disappointed.
Women's rights.......2005-08-10
Pier 4 is an expense account monument of a restaurant. Spenser takes Susan Silverman there for lunch after his new client, Harv Shepard, hires him to find his wife. Spenser looked for runaway kids in the previous decade and now he is looking for the mothers. He drives to Hyannis to meet with Shepard.
Pam Shepard, the wife, grew up in Belfast, Maine. She and her husband graduated from Colby in 1954. The police know she took the bus to New Bedford. She had been something of a regular at a motel bar, the Seven Seas, in Hyannis.
From the Acushnet River, New Bedford rises steeply from the docks. When one of the women with whom Pam Shepard is staying hurts Spenser, he tells her that he is a professional thug. Spenser keeps her whereabouts a secret from Harv. Harv has been beaten in the manner a loan shark would use to have his debt paid.
Some days later Spenser learns that Pam has been involved in a bank robbery and homicide. She is distraught. (This book is dated in a nice way. In the 1970's middle class people believed they had to commit crimes to show revolutionary fervor.) In this book Spenser and Hawk are not working for the same cause, although Hawk is a character in the story. At this stage in the lives of Robert B. Parker's ensemble characters, Susan is working as a guidance counselor.
In the end both husband and wife are in big jams and Spenser extricates them by calling in law enforcement and setting up a sting. Others, more guilty than the couple, do walk into the trap. All of the the plot points are nicely set out by the author.
Book Description
The story of the boardwalk town Bruce Springsteen made famous-and a quintessential portrait of small-town American democracy.
When Bruce Springsteen called his first album Greetings from Asbury Park, he introduced a generation of fans to a fallen seaside resort town that came to represent working-class American life. But behind this archetypal small-town landscape lies a complicated past.
Starting with the town's founding as a religious promised land, music journalist and poet Daniel Wolff plots a course through 130 years of entwined social and musical history, touching on John Philip Sousa, Count Basie, Frank Sinatra, and Frankie Lymon on the way to the town Bruce was born to run from. Out of the details of local history-the boardwalk in the Gilded Age; the celebrities who passed through, from Stephen Crane to Martin Luther King; sensational murder trials; the birth of Mob control; and a devastating mid-century "race riot"-emerges a universal story of one small town's fortunes. Told with grace and full of fascinating detail, Daniel Wolff's tour across thirteen decades of the Fourth of July in Asbury Park captures all the allure and heartbreak of the American dream reduced to blight and decay, with gentrification as the one hope for a return to its glory days.
Customer Reviews:
OFFENSIVE ,POLITICALLY CORRECT TRASH.......2007-05-07
I am offended by this book.
It is politically correct,which in itself is a turn-off,but the author,Daniel Wolff,seems neither to understand the history of Asbury Park,nor appreciate the fact that that history CANNOT be viewed through a politically correct microscope.
To begin with Asbury Park,as well as nearby Ocean Grove were begun as strictly conservative religious communities...Wolff either does not understand the importance of this fact,or is himself offended by its implications.Furthermore,both communities were begun not as public,but as PRIVATE communities.Absbury park,unlike Ocean Grove,was not wholly owned by the Methodist church but was,instead,owned and operated by one man,james Bradey,himself a strict Methodist ...
To understand Asbury Park and not understand that THINGS WERE VERY VERY DIFFERENT IN THE 19th century is to not understand anything at all...Wolff seems intent upon grafting 21st century values and thinking upon a 19th century canvas,something that just does not work..
Take,for example,the problems caused by the black population of that time,who neither owned any property in Asbury Park,nor even lived within that communities borders..These people were,for the most part,employed as "menials",i.e.porters,cooks,maids and suchlike...It was a time when the sort of equality that is commonplace today was NOT commonplace..And Asbury Park,like any other BUSINESS VENTURE,depended upon a monied customer base in order to both thrive and expand...and in the 19th century that monied customer base,like it or not,was white,AND not a little bit bigoted against blacks..Sure,by today's standards such behaviour would not be tolerated,but it is apparent that Wolff does not understand that 1880 is not 2007,and that what today would not be tolerated in 1880,1890,1900,ect was both tolerated and commonplace.So instead of understanding this fact,and writing about Asbury Park AS IT WAS,Wolff instead makes his focus the fact that blacks,who were employed at various businesses in Asbury Park were nonetheless not wanted as paying customers whose presence tended to deter the monied white from coming there..
Wolff celebrates defiance..Instead of appreciating that the 19th century,for the most part was a far different,more conservative place that almost anywhere is today,he istead tends to deride the values that were prevailing and glorify the critics..One of these was author Stephen Crane,famous for the novel"The Red Badge of Courage"but,at that time,a relentless critic of everything Brady's Asbury Park represented..Most people who came to Asbury Park at that time had little problem with theprevailing atmosphere of conservative,religiously oriented standards(otherwise how could either Asbury Park of nearby Ocean Grove thrive,as they most certainly did?)but Wolff chooses to ignore this fact and instead zero in on the rebels,like Crane,who apparently felt that it was his job to spit on the status Quo..
Throughout the book Wolff makes the saga of Asbury Park one great big "civil rights"saga..Which,of course,it was not...Further,Wolff fails to understand why Asbury Park became the washed up slum that,until only recently,it was..Like it or not,the monied interests,both in terms of capital and the tourist trade,were largely dominated by whites who deserted Asbury Park when other more"exclusive"getaways presented themselves(in the more modern era of automobile and airplane travel),leaving the town largely to its black population,under which like every other big city in New Jersey,quickly degenerated into a slum...
Does this sound a tad bigoted?Maybe,but bigoted or not the fact remains that when whites fled the inner-cities and the old shore resort towns,the new black majorities there no longer attracted tourists or industry..
Wolff fails to understand that tourists WITH MONEY do not have to go to places like Asbury Park...They do not have to mingle,on an equal basis,with those whom they employ to cut thier hair or shine thier shoes..Sure,in a"perfect"world everyone would not only be"equal"but accepting and considerate towards everyone else,but unless you have been living with your eyes and ears closed,ours has never been a perfect world,not today,and certainly not in the 19th century,which was Asbury Park's heyday...So Wolff,failing to understand reality,instead paints his word-picture of Asbury Park in strokes that have little in common with reality..
Another one of Wolff's heroic figures is Bruce Springsteen..Wolff celebrates Springsteen's lyrics about the working man,and all of the rest of his contrived twaddle,as if the songs that have made it possible for Springsteen to enjoy a lifestyle far removed from just about anyone he ever encountered in Asbury Park somehow has meaning with regard to the city itself..Surely if Springsteen's lyrics did have any real relevance to the real Asbury Park,then Springsteen himself would still be living there..Instead he lives(at least part of the time)in Rumson,new jersey,the sort of rich beach community,populated mainly by rich whites like himself,that,in his book,Wolff so denigrates...
This book is trash..It has no idea what reality represents,either way back when,in the 19th century,or now,in the politically correct 21st century..Springsteen,wolff's anti-hero from Asbury Park,may sing about the disenfranchised,but like the white people of that long ago Asbury Park,he doesn't live among them..
How not to run a city.......2007-04-14
Not a Bruce Springsteen bio or critique and not advertised as one, 4th of July, Asbury Park: A History of the Promised Land by Daniel Wolff fits its eponymus title exactly.
Please excuse any hubris - it is not intended - but you will enjoy this book a lot more if you have an aquaintance and familiarity with Asbury (the only name by which it was referred). And, while my title aptly describes what this book addressses, I have to admit to being stunned by the history author Wolff presents.
Key to that is the knowledge that Asbury Park did not develop as city through what I'll call natural means. There was no influx of population that arrived and, other time, established roots and the attendant need for a municipal structure to meet public needs. Instead, it was the creation of a individual who in this day and age would be called a fundamentalist Christian but was profit-minded enough that he wanted to work on Sundays.
The creation was named Asbury Park after noted Methodist Francis Asbury and its mission, if you will, was to provide beach-related services to the quasi-rich. This is did with notable success to its customer-base while providing virtually nothing to the population that worked there. Its municipal government was based on the premise of "of the influencial, for the wealthy, supported by the down-trodden." This precept cannot be better depicted than by the fact that the blacks who worked in the city's nyriiad hotels and business not only lived literally on the wrong side of the railway tracks but also lived in an area not incorporated into the city until the 20th Century so that the administration did not have to provide services to them.
The Administrations also subscribed to the "no honor among thieves" doctrine by engaging in perpetual internicine warfare among themselves to win the mayoralty and patronage dispensations. But, irregardless of whomsoever was in power, there was adherence to the notion that public funds were - after appropriate skimming - only to be spent on the tourists. This left the city with an elegant ocean facing facade backed by a rotting infrastructure.
With the advent of cheap airfare in the 1960s, tourists ceased to come to the Jersey Shore, choosing instead sites in the Caribbean and Mexico. With the slowdown in revenue, the city collapsed inwardly and, by the 1970/1980 period devolved into the Beruit cum Baghdad appearance it has to this day.
Wolff portrays this history in a clear, concise fashion and does name the names and cite the crimes. His appraisals are scrupulously honest and fair. He points out that the tendency to fortget anything more than, say, five blocks from the boardwalk was not limited by race, color, creed or place of national origin; in a way, he provces that corruption is the best example of diversity.
All in all, an excellent book. It broke my heart to read it.
Down the Shore.......2005-10-26
This book is a great resource. As a person who grew up "down the shore" adjacent to Asbury Park, I've learned a tremendous amount about the area's history. Interesting read with a great level of detail and chapter notes. I had borrowed it from the library but wanted my own copy to add to my shore book collection.
Who knew? .......2005-10-22
Who knew that the history of a town that I had never heard of in New Jersey would yield such an interesting read? The town is set up in such a way that it resembles some of the seedy racist behaviors that all of us would like to believe don't exist anymore but need to come to terms with.
There is plenty of talk about Springsteen, but there is also plenty of well-researched information on the rest of the love-to-hate-'em characters in the town.
A revelation on every page.......2005-10-16
I am a Jersey kid by birth. I graduated high school the same year as Bruce Springsteen, but about 50 miles away. It might as well have been 5 million miles.
As a kid, there were family trips to the boardwalk at Asbury Park. When I was in high school, there were concerts at Convention Hall. I even dated a girl who's family spent part of the summer in Ocean Grove, but that's a story for another time. To me, Asbury Park was the length and breadth of the beach and boardwalk.
It was obvious, even to an infrequent visitor like me, that the city was in terrible decline, but it took this book to explain how and why that happened, and, at the same time, place that experience within a much larger context.
The stresses caused by the fundamental dichotomies that Asbury Park was built on are the same ones that challenge much of the U.S. Religion and commerce, racial conflict, the strengths and weaknesses of machine politics, even the tug-of-war of fantasy and reality, they are all in Asbury Park's history, and they are all around us, wherever we are. Those conflicts all took a terrible toll on Asbury Park, just as they all take a toll everywhere.
In this book, Daniel Wolff tells us the history of a small place, and in the telling, illuminates larger truths. It is no coincidence that Springsteen's fame grew as he found ways to express his universal themes without tying them to a specific place and time. In his own way, Daniel Wolfe lets us see how and why that happened.
As serious as the subject matter is, the book is written in a deftly lighthanded style that makes reading it a completely enjoyable event. Don't miss it.
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Self-Destruction in the Promised Land: A Psychocultural Biology of American Suicide
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Customer Reviews:
Time travel into a different reality........2007-08-23
This is one of THE most important books for anyone interested in the varieties of the human mind. Thanks to the compulsive thoroughness of an early 14th century inquisitor (a bishop who became pope), lengthy quotes from the people that he was interrogating came to be preserved in the Vatican library. The accused are heretics, stubborn country folk supporting "the resistance", as it were, that handful of Cathar holy men hiding in the woods following the Church's campaign savage against the flourishing southern French civilization around the town of Albi in the first quarter of the 13th century. In spite of the slashing and burning that had laid waste to the land of the Cathars in the previous century, the folks of Montaillou were stubborn in holding to their beliefs, and here it gets interesting.
What on earth were these people like, what issues could possibly matter enough to medieval farmers for them to put their lives on the line over subtle theological distinctions, like whether the Trinity was indivisible? LeRoy Ladurie thankfully quotes extensively from the sources, and a picture emerges of a Christian religion influenced by contact with the Eastern Gnostics, leaning towards a belief in reincarnation and the virtues of vegetarian asceticism. The Catholic Church was seen as a nasty political beast at odds with a true faith, and the villagers turn out to have been surprisingly sophisticated, reading books, for instance, at a time when only hand-copied manuscripts existed. It is apparent that many popular religious movements preceded the protestant schism.
In their literal testimony we glimpse the villagers' daily lives, their sense of time and reality, their relations with neighbors (like the Moors of northern Spain), as well as a social organization that was more communal (and less class-divided) than our unconsciously marxist-influenced history books would have it. The lady of the manor is seen regularly spending time gossiping in the kitchens of the farmers, the shepherds tend each others' flocks on cash contract, and when it's safe, religion is vigorously debated by the fire. It's not a dark oppressed feudal world. The romantic entanglements of the village priest alone are enough to liven the place up. If we had such documents for other times and places, in which people's thinking was as thoroughly documented, we might better appreciate our origins. This book is a gold mine.
In 1320 would you have worn a yellow cross on your chest?.......2006-02-24
This book is for those who enjoy reading serious historical and anthropological studies; for those who delight in asking how did our predecessors live? Sometimes we wonder when travelling in Europe how was life in those medieval villages? We can spot them everywhere, with a bunch of little houses below, slowly climbing up a hill, and a large feudal mansion on top. If this has happened to you, this book is not only essential but it will be a very pleasant adventure. The details we learn about daily life in Montaillou, the people's beliefs, their gestures, their sexual life, their culture and commerce, all can only be so precise thanks to an obsessive preoccupation of Inquisition's guardian Jacques Fournier, Bishop of Pamiers and later on Pope at Avignon, known as Benedict XII. We owe our pleasure also to the masterly data intrepretation and selection of Fournier's archaic texts to Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, a fine scholar. Fournier, a dedicated religious man was interested in documenting the practice of Catharism -- a heretic sect -- in Languedoc, France. This way he left for future generations rich material about the habits and ways of living of the time. Ladurie guides us through this data and give us a dynamic view of life in the first two decades of the 14th c. It is seductive. It is worth the effort to lose ourselves among these villagers, from lice-picking to the priest's amorous adventures, from a shepherd's life to the punishments for heresies. Do not miss this book. It is time-travelling. Although this is not a novel, I recommend after this book the reading of Iian Pears, The Dream of Scipio.
Everyday Life 700 Years Ago, With the Compliments of the Inquisition.......2005-11-02
Every once in a while, some terrible act results in good. For example, the same Spanish bishop -- Diego de Landa -- who burned the irreplaceable writings of the Mayans wrote a book which was critical in subsequent scholars' understanding of Mayan culture. So also the inquisition established in southwest France in the early years of the 14th century to root out the last vestiges of the Cathar heresy resulted, ultimately, in this little treasure of a book.
The Albigensian Crusade had dealt a death-blow to Catharism, but rural pockets of the heresy persisted. The ambitious bishop of Pamiers, Jacques Fournier, brought in all the residents of one village for questioning. Consisting mostly of shepherds and peasants, Montaillou was a hotbed of Catharism, including the parish priest! Everyone was questioned in detail about their religious practices, households, relationships, work, and travel. Their testimony was taken down verbatim by a clerk; and, after the trial, the records lay untouched in the library of the Vatican until Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie wrote this book.
This is not the usual study of wealthy, educated, and influential Medieval people. Here we have the voice of Everyman. In addition to a great deal of detail about the practices of the Cathar "goodmen," with their sacraments of heretication, the "consolamentum," and the awful "endura," we see how average people formed households, managed to eke out a living, what they talked about, how they got along with their neighbors, how faithful they were to their wives -- in effect, everything.
Because Le Roy Ladurie is a scholarly historian, there are hundreds of footnotes pointing to records of this particular inquisatorial proceeding. They do not manage, however, to cover up the voices of the people of Montaillou, as they tried to explain to their inquisitors the details of their everyday lives.
It took me a little while to realize the uniqueness of this book as I read it. Then it came clear to me that these were the voices of the little people who are almost never heard in history.
Important and a good read.......2003-12-15
In my historiography classes this book has been lauded and used as an example of a new form of history-writing: a complete discription of a village and all it's aspects: religion, sex, food, families, houses etc.
It is definitely not a boring book about one particular subject but covers wide aspects of the Pyrennee Village of Montaillou. Besides being interesting to read it also might open your eyes about certain ideas we might have had about religion and society in the 14th century. We read now that everyone slept with everyone, including the priest, the greatest fornicator of them all. Homosexuality is normal and people cried a lot sooner than now.
Read it and be amazed about 14th century France, it's different than you always though
Disgustingly Good..........2003-02-02
This book was a very good look at the early Church. In school I was always taught that the first Christain group to rebel againt the Catholics, was Martin Luther's people. Just another thing public school messes up. It was amazing to learn there were "heretical groups" almost 300 years before Luther. I also surprised my English professor when I told her there were Inquisitions before the famous Spanish one.
The most disguting part though, was the "cure for lust" It was better for the priests to have intercourse with boys on dung heaps than to sleep with women. It's interesting to know that, while these were Cathars and not Catholics, this type of homosexual pedaphilia is nothing new to religion. Definitely a book well worth reading to get another look at the insanity of the Middle Ages.
Book Description
A New York Times bestseller, the groundbreaking authoritative history of the migration of African-Americans from the rural South to the urban North. A definitive book on American history, The Promised Land is also essential reading for educators and policymakers at both national and local levels.
Customer Reviews:
Worthy but not about what the title says.......2007-09-12
This is a well written interesting book presenting information vital to understanding contemporary America. At the same thime this is only indirectly a book about the Great Black Migration. Rather it is about policies at the federal level, especially the collage of programs called the "war on poverty" and how they relate to American society in the 1960s and 1970s with examples from several African Americans from the Clarksdale Mississippi area who migrated to Chicago, several of them returning to Clarksdale.
One of the most valuable parts of the book--and well-written-is the description of the changes that went on in the 1940s with mechanism of agriculture that led to the migration--cotton got picked and then weeded mechanically the army of cotton field hads who had been the most important segment of the African American population was no longer needed in the South. This is one of the best and most practical explanations of this, especially as he focuses on Clarksdale Mississippi and the surrounding area. He gives a good history of the evolution of the cotton crop in the area and the evolution of Black society, providing examples in the lives of several people.
To me this is quite useful because one of my chief focuses is the history of the Blues. Clarksdale --the big town near where Muddy Waters, Ike Turner, Robert Johnson, John Lee Hooker, Elmore James, Son House, Charlie Batton, and so many other Blues singers came from--is central to the history of the Delta Blues. Knowing the social and economic conditions that existed there is quite useful for music scholars who can profit from this part of the book.
Lemann is pretty good in descripting the way the plantation system broke up families and how the immigration to Chicago impacted several different Clarksdale folk who travelled up to Chicago. He charts their stories getting into Chicago in the 1940s and early 1950s fairly well.
Once he does this, there is an abrupt shift. He tries to chart the various conflicts in the Kennedy and Johnson administration about dealing with the Black urban problems, the rebellions, and poverty, which is really an aside from discussing Black migration. In this regard as he used Clarksdale as an example, he uses Chicago where all of his people from Clarksdale have migrated. I would imagine that the intimate detail that he goes into regarding the inside debates on forming the poverty programs and the infighting between Johnson and Kennedy factions of the Democratic party over it and the way the Daley machine in Chicago related to all of this is of interest to many people. It was told in such a way that even though I am not interested in it, it was interesting though not absorbing.
He presents the end result of the programs is that they never did anything but create a larger base for the Black middle and upper middle class among administrators of these programs and other public functionary jobs. In the 1960s, many of us who fought for a perspective for Black people independent of the Republicans and Democrats pointed out that this was the actual purpose of the programs, not to end poverty, but to encorporate political activists who might otherwise be drawn into the struggle for the interests of Black people into the apparatus of the government and into the feeding ground to become part of the Democratic and Republican parties and corporate America.
Lemann is good at showing the failure of these programs and the hell they produced for Black working folk like the subjects of his story, but he rarely steps back and examines the larger question of the way society as a whole functions.
If American capitalist society persistently creates a large army of poor African Americans, now supplemented by millions of equally poor or poorer workers without papers with even less rights, is this not something reqired by the system. Is this not a damper of the attempts of all working people for better working conditions, better wages, better social programs in education, health, and the environment. Is this not a feeding ground for the racist ideas that nourish acceptance of this society. Is this not a way of stopping social solidarity among working folks.
Again, I expected an overall history of the migration covering the whole of the nation in the 20th Century. This is not that book, but an extremely readable book giving very good case studies of how the Southern cotton plantation system worked, how it ended, and a history of the war on poverty in the 1960s and early 1970s. In passing, he provides some stories of African Americans women and men who lived through this history.
Recommended by a conservative talk show host.......2007-02-09
Years ago, on the recommendation of a black conservative talk show host, I read this book. While I could understand how this man could read a corroboration of his own views into this book, the conclusions I drew were considerably more compassionate. This historical analysis does not propose solutions as much as illustrate and analyze the issues of ascendancy from slavery.
Great read with valuable insights on US history.......2006-11-02
As an historic account, The Promised Land contains many interesting personal anecdotes hung on the framework of a much broader social picture that make the book an engaging and informative read. Although the book covered many different characters, which made it hard to follow at times, each one had a valuable contribution to make to Lemann's work in portraying for his readers the society and factors that influenced migration amongst the black population in the middle of the 20th century. I think Lemann could be criticized for focusing too much on the political sparring during the chapter on Washington, which digresses from the book's topic of black migration and adds little relevant information. I also think that while Lemann's relating of the personal lives of black migrants has the advantage of being engaging, it has the disadvantage of perhaps being too personal. In other words, the experiences of the individuals he elects to interview and record may not accurately relate the average experience for a migrant. I think that to carry more weight, the stories must be compared to some sort of statistical data to show that they correlate to the norm. I felt the writing was eloquent yet easily readable. I gained a much greater understanding of two areas of history of the United States of which I had little prior knowledge: the life of African-Americans in the Civil Rights era and the domestic influences of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations in focusing on poverty amongst the black minority.
Terrific reading.......2006-06-28
For someone who has just visited the delta area of Mississippi and actually traversed some of the hollow grounds of the plantations all thru the Clarksdale area, this was accurate,enjoyable and fascinating reading.
outstanding book........2000-07-04
This was an excellent combination of conveying historical fact with painting the picture by telling the stories of several people and families who lived the history. A fascinating period in history and a great read.
Customer Reviews:
Every American should read this book!.......2007-05-13
Even though this is a slim book and a fast read, it is a thorough analysis and recounting of one of the worst white riots and devastation of a African-American community in US history. While there have been many books and studies of the Tulsa riot of 1921, this one quickly and seriously explains the social-political and economic context and leaves the reader with a renewed awareness of the horrors of racism.
Providing a balanced account to remove the Veil.......1999-11-30
Rarely do we have an instance when a teller of history valiantly attempts to remain objective. The author has done well in presenting a historical perspective that does not seek unconscionable blame nor claim illusionary vindication. These acts of historical literary balance, lay the foundations upon which great civilizations have risen. Having heard the oral traditions of Greenwood, it would have been very easy to paint all white people with a broad stroke of UNDENIABLE EVIL, as it would have been with providing all blacks with a halo of SAINTHOOD. By piecemilling together facts, reminants of what many have sought to destroy, along with balancing the personal interviews, the author has provided the impetus for how we should begin discussing our history. As a Black American, I feel slighted, as if I have just been walking in circles, having never learned of moments such as Greenwood, which helps us to better understand who we are. It is strange how we have never seen war as a viable option, but have been labeled as the most violent and retched. Thanks to the author and his supporters, who have finally began removing the veil of America's History. May others, who set themselves upon pedestals, possess enough courage to pursue such a task.
Bias even in these reviews..........1999-11-22
Regardless of whatever facts one can produce that might make the black people involved in this travesty look guilty, America had never bombed itself before this point. I see one review talking about, there was a war and the black people lost. Yes, we lost this war, and every other war against racism. And looking at this incident allows us all to see why black people will continue to lose for a while: we don't own the bombs and we don't run the government. I don't want to see any condemnations of the truth, and the truth is that the black people were the victims in this. To sum it all up: they were too successful to be in America. We need books like these that show us all of the things that the history books that school our children conveniently forget to include, and all of the odds against black people being successful in this country. I didn't read the book but I commend the author for taking one step towards raising the racial consciousness levels of citizens.
This book seems to be clearly biased........1999-08-21
Many of the "facts" in this book are clearly in dispute. Other historians and researchers have uncovered evidence that contradicts or even debunks some of the supposeded events. This book seems to try and make the 1921 Tulsa Race WAR look like a very one-sided affair, with whites being "guilty" and blacks being "innocent". The truth is that both sides were at fault. A war broke out, and the blacks lost.
Well written, thoroughly researched, well documented.......1999-05-27
Scott Ellsworth has produced what is now the most important work regarding Tulsa's 1921 race riot. While Ellsworth's conclusions may be argued, his skills as a researcher and historian are exemplary and reviews to the contrary can be discounted as meritless. This work is an important link to understanding the civil rights movements of the 50s & 60s. There is no way to lay blame for all of the riot on any group, and Ellsworth is careful to point out the failings of both whites and blacks. The underlying issues of economies and a strong black community are well developed and examined as catalysts of the violence that followed. Ellsworth also spends considerable time examining the reconstruction of black Tulsa and the ongoing tension between the races as the community tried to recover. This is an excellent work that deserves more attention than just the narrow audience of historians and scholars.
Average customer rating:
- Outstanding!
- All You Need for Your Seder
- Fabulous!
- The Best Haggadah (hands down)
- A wicked good seder
|
Promised Land Haggadah
Lynn Lebow Nadeau
Manufacturer: Anagogala Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Haggadah
| Judaism
| Religion & Spirituality
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 0964607492 |
Customer Reviews:
Outstanding!.......2007-05-22
After I had already ordered different Haggadah's for Seder, I found this one. It is outstanding in my opinion! Very well done, with both English and Hebrew texts, opens left to right like traditional Hebrew writing, easy to read, follow and understand. This is the Haggadah I will be using from now on!
All You Need for Your Seder.......2003-04-14
I reviewed a number of Haggadahs and felt so relieved when I found this one. It nicely blends traditional and modern thought and provides with everything you need to conduct a Seder for any type of adult audience. Our audience is usually interfaith and multicultural, and this Haggadah has done the trick! I wouldn't recommend this Haggadah if you have young children. The tone and language are to "adult" for youngsters. If you have young kids, I would consider "My Favoriate Family Haggadah" by Shari Faden Donahue.
Fabulous!.......2001-11-05
A haggadah for adults-only seders. Some masculine prayers, some feminine, and some gender-neutral. Includes music to follow for the songs. My only puzzle was why some Hebrew prayers were transliterated differently from the Hebrew above them. Celebrates freedom!
The Best Haggadah (hands down).......2000-02-25
I grew up struggling to get through Seders while my father read from the tattered and worn Maxwell House Haggadah we kept stored in the closet. The text rarely energized me or gave me reason to compare the plight of the ancient Jews to the situation of peoples in modern society. Picking up the "Promised Land" for the first time sparked a truly spiritual interest in the meaning of Passover. Nadeau has done an excellent job of synthesizing old and new, traditional and alternative, spirituality and levity. It has become an essential component of my Seder and works wonders in bringing together those who attend the event. By creating community, allowing everyone to share their thoughts and drawing parallels between ancient injustices and those afflicting us today, "The Promised Land" restores Passover to its rightful place as one of the most important days of the year.
Don't hesitate. You will not be disappointed.
A wicked good seder.......2000-02-22
The one and only time I threw a Seder for friends, Jewish and non-Jewish, I used this Haggadah. No matter what the participant's religion, upbringing, or nationality (one person hailed from Thailand, and had never even HEARD of Passover), they felt a part of the proceedings and enjoyed themselves thoroughly. Much love went into this endeavor. I strongly recommend it.
Amazon.com
The heroine of Mona in the Promised Land is a true child of the suburbs. Mona--a self-described "self-made mouth" goes to temple, loves pickles, is boy-crazy, worries about getting into the right college and keeping up with her over-achieving sister, and wishes her parents were less strict. Her equally Jewish Westchester classmates hardly notice what everyone else finds hard to forget: Mona may be Jewish by choice (and voice) and American by nationality, but her surname is Chang and so she is considered less an expert on seders and schmaltz than China.
In Gish Jen's hands, '70s suburbia is a place of buoyant hope and change. While Mona's parents worry about what she'll do next--her mother suggesting at one point that she might even want to be black, Mona ripostes that that's not a religion. She does, however admit to knowing "some kids studying to be Bobby Seale. They call each other brother, and eat soul food instead of subs, and wear their hair in the baddest Afros they can manage." The divide between past conservatism and present bohemia is one of the novel's concerns, but its epigraphs hint at the porous nature of cultural identity, of groups taking what they choose from one another. As for Gish Jen, she turns out to be a descendant of Laurence Sterne. Mona has the buttonholing narrator, the rollicking comedy that modulates into genuine sadness, and the incidental but all-important details that might confuse those intent on the author's ethnicity but will delight everyone else.
Book Description
In this ebullient and inventive novel, Gish Jen restores multiculturalism from high concept to a fact of life. At least that's what it becomes for teenaged Mona Chang, who in 1968 moves with her newly prosperous family to Scarshill, New York, where the Chinese have become "the new Jews." What could be more natural than for Mona to take this literally--even to the point of converting? As Mona attends temple "rap" sessions and falls in love (with a nice Jewish boy who lives in a tepee), Jen introduces us to one of the most charming and sweet-spirited heroines in recent fiction, a girl who can wisecrack with perfect aplomb even when she's organizing the help in her father's pancake house. On every page of
Mona in the Promised Land, Gish Jen sets our received notions spinning with a wit as dry as a latter-day Jane Austen's.
"A shining example of a multicultural message delivered with the wit and bite of art...Gish Jen creates a particular world where dim sum is as American as apple pie."--Los Angeles Times
Customer Reviews:
A Very Interesting Read!.......2006-12-04
I had to read this for class and I thought it was an extremely interesting read. I thought the characters were, although at times stereotypical, also came alive on the page. I thought this book explored many racial attitudes and what it means to be from a certain race or culture.
Delightful read, with many flaws.......2006-11-14
Jen's clever narrative style, chocked full of witty observations, and bubbling with good humor, makes the book uplifting, to say the least. The protagonist, Mona, has an infectiously cheeky attitude and confidently undertakes unique and unconventional choices, such as converting to Judaism. She is also smart, talkative, and consciencious, openly protesting her parents' racism towards Alfred, the black cook in the family restaurant. Through Mona, Gish Jen makes an obvious effort at projecting a non-stereotypical (rather anti-stereotypical) image of the Asian-American female: namely, one who is loudmouth, daring, and a self-motivated intellectual rather than only obediently school-smart like her sister Callie. (Jen, however, allows Callie's character to pale into simplistic stereotype, in order to better contrast Mona - a weak choice for a novel dealing mainly with complicated multicultural issues of identity.) Mona's parents, Helen and Ralph, with all their quirks and Chinese-isms are humorously and sympathetically depicted. Being Asian-American, and from Shanghai, just like Mona's family, I found the family scenes to be hilariously accurate, and a very enjoyable read. I also found Jen's ruminations on the cultural conflicts between parents and children, the first and second generations, family/politeness-centered values versus self/sincerity-centered values helpful and touching in sorting out my own experiences and family relationships.
That said, the plot and character development in Jen's second novel is appallingly simplistic, and she too often sacrifices depth of character and realistic portrayal of life for a clever jab, a nice, racy guffaw. Indeed, "jab" would be an accurate word for describing the way she treats her characters, all of whom are blunt stereotypes embodying one or another cultural phenomenon (the white-bourgeois-hippie-pseudo-intellectual with no consideration for social politeness or the feelings of his lady free-loves; the Chinese girl who goes to college and becomes very very Chinese by influence; the non-Asians who are obsessed with Asian culture; the wasps and their wealthy conformist ways; the Jewish girls and their nose jobs; the Japanese and their confounding zen; the black guy and his ignorant, sex-obsessed, wife-cheating ways; the only Hispanic guy who turns out to be the burglar and maybe-attempted-rapist): Jen pokes fun at all her characters (except Mona), sarcastically, simplistically, without any real attempt at portraying human complexity in her prototypical caricatures, and without any real respect for the nuances and larger questions of the cultural movements of the late sixties, where she chose to set her book. I was most uncomfortable with the way black males (and all black people) were portrayed in the book. Adverse to Jen's attempt to break the cultural stereotype through Mona's characterization, her blatant insensitivity for African-American stereotypes, was disappointing to me.
However, contrary to some previous reviewers, I don't believe that Jen's choice to convert to Judaism is a "denial of her heritage," deserving of disparagement. Rather it reflects the multiplicity of modern Asian-American identity, set in a scene of increasing diversity in America, and increasing opportunities to "switch". Judaism is a religion, not merely an ethnicity; there are Jews in China, too, as Mona emphatically states to her mother. Mona's willingness to explore the multifarious nature and beliefs of the people around her is not the downfall of the novel. Rather, it is Gish Jen's own unwillingness to acknowledge them in her writing.
Plus which, her plot is like a teenage fairy tale. Too fantastic. Too convenient. The epilogue does not do justice to the wit and beautiful writing technique of Gish Jen.
WORST BOOK EVER.......2006-04-25
If I stranded were on a desert island w/ nothing but a copy of this book, it would still not be worth my time to read it. It is boring and the characters are awful. Is is possible to hate every single character in a novel? Yes, it is.
Mona needed to have a reality check........2003-04-24
After starting this book and putting it down in three years, I finally am able to give it three stars. I found it very hard to get into this book and want to continue to read it. If it hadn't been for a snow storm I may never have gotten around to finishing it.
While Mona Chang is a wise cracking character throughout the book, her mother is the true comedian. Her character kept me laughing and often thinking about one of the mothers from the book the "Joy Luck Club." Her level of sarcasm was unbeatable.
When Mona's sister embraces their culture Mona finds her odd. Yet she doesn't think anything of embracing the culture of her friend. It was almost painful to read when Mona dines with her WASP friend and family.
One of the reasons I was not a huge fan of this book, was due to Mona's constant need to be Jewish. I don't know why it just didn't appeal to me for this character. She fought against her own heritage to the point that she actually became a rude character that just didn't seem to get it. It being what her parents had worked for and struggled for. They were people that were proud to be American. Mona on the other hand found a love interest and a friend that spent too much time looking for the injustice in life. Mona's parents become frustrated with her for good reason.
The Underground Railroad section was definitely a grasping at straws moment. Later when Seth and Mona struggle in their relationship I found the "jumping" section a bit dramatic. Especially for the reasoning behind Seth's need for attention.
Although it is easy to find fault with this book, it is also a book that in the end I am glad I read. Mona is a character that you will not soon forget.
Mona wants to be something other than Asian Promised Land.......2003-04-16
For some odd reason this book left a bad taste in my mouth. She was trying so hard to be Jewish, I guess it's not cool or PC for Mona to be Baptist + the writers ... attempt to integrate African -Americans in this book. I felt as if I was having multiculturalism shoved down my throat...
Asian-american lit this is not.
A wannabe white girl with one black friend literature - buy it.
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