kidzdoc's 12 narrative non-fiction books in 2012

Inspired by GCPLreader's comments about narrative non-fiction on my 75 Books thread today, followed by qebo's mention of this group, I've decided to read 12 works of narrative non-fiction in 2012, as it is one of my favorite genres. This shouldn't be hard, as I've read 15-20 or more NNF books so far in 2011.

Narrative non-fiction books completed in 2012:
1. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson
2. India Becoming: A Portrait of Life in Modern India by Akash Kapur
3. Fragile Beginnings: Discoveries and Triumphs in the Newborn ICU by Adam Wolfberg, MD
4. When the Garden Was Eden: Clyde, the Captain, Dollar Bill, and the Glory Days of the New York Knicks by Harvey Araton
5. Walk on Water: Inside an Elite Pediatric Surgical Unit by Michael Ruhlman
6. Panther Baby by Jamal Joseph
7. God's Hotel: A Doctor, a Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine by Victoria Sweet
8. Being Sam Frears: A Life Less Ordinary by Mary Mount
9. Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on Mississippi's Gulf Coast by Natasha Trethewey

Non-narrative non-fiction books completed in 2012:
1. A Disease Apart: Leprosy in the Modern World by Tony Gould
2. Best Mets: Fifty Years of Highs and Lows from New York's Most Agonizingly Amazin' Team by Matthew Silverman
3. Letter from the Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King, Jr.
4. Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness?: What It Means to Be Black Now by Touré
5. Your New Baby: A Guide to Newborn Care by Roy Benaroch, MD
6. Suffer the Children: Flaws, Foibles, Fallacies and the Grave Shortcomings of Pediatric Care by Peter Palmieri
7. The Lepers of Molokai by Charles Warren Stoddard
8. Colonoscopy for Dummies ~ Special Edition by Kathleen A. Doble
9. A Planet of Viruses by Carl Zimmer
10. Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable
11. The Patient Survival Guide: 8 Simple Solutions to Prevent Hospital- and Healthcare-Associated Infections by Dr. Maryanne McGuckin
12. The Loss of El Dorado: A Colonial History by V.S. Naipaul
13. The Making of Modern Medicine: Turning Points in the Treatment of Disease by Michael Bliss

These are my favorite dozen narrative non-fiction books of 2011, with asterisks to indicate my top six books:

*The Memory Chalet by Tony Judt
An African in Greenland by Tété-Michel Kpomassie
Match Day: One Day and One Dramatic Year in the Lives of Three New Doctors by Brian Eule
*I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor's Journey by Izzeldin Abuelaish
Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
Send in the Idiots: Stories from the Other Side of Autism by Kamran Nazeer
*A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz
*Seeing Patients: Unconscious Bias in Health Care by Augustus A. White III, M.D.
*Real Bloomsbury by Nicholas Murray
Who are We--and Should it Matter in the 21st Century? by Gary Younge
*Colour Me English by Caryl Phillips
County: Life, Death and Politics at Chicago's Public Hospital by David A. Ansell, MD, MPH

The Memory Chalet and Colour Me English are non-fiction collections, which each include several brilliant personal essays, with Judt focusing on his battle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, and Philips discussing his childhood as an immigrant from the Caribbean island of St Kitts to Leeds, UK, and his development as a writer. All six books were 5 star reads for me.

I'll mention other favorite NNF books of mine in the coming weeks. My all time favorite book, which I may read for a third time in 2012, is The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors and the Collision of Two Cultures by Anne Fadiman.

Nice to see you here! I follow your 75er thread in part because of the non-fiction (this year I recall wishlisting The Emperor of All Maladies and Life Ascending). May be dangerous to see it all concentrated together...

Nice! I'll be following along...

I'm running out of steam tonight, but I have this baby starred and I'll be back. Thanks for the invite, Darryl. This will be great!

I'm here and looking forward to it Darryl.

>2 qebo: Thanks for the invitation and the welcome, qebo. I'm glad that you and Jenny (GCPLreader) mentioned narrative non-fiction on my thread yesterday, as I had realized that my list of planned reads from my TBR for 2012 was short on non-fiction books.

>3 drneutron: I consider you to be one of the top non-fiction readers on LT, so I'll closely follow your thread here, Jim.

>4 msf59: I'm glad that you'll join qebo's group, Mark. This will be a good place to discuss narrative non-fiction, and I hope that Jenny joins us, as well.

>5 brenzi: Hi, Bonnie! I look forward to your non-fiction reading in 2012.

One of my goals for 2012 is to make a significant dent in my TBR pile, and there are plenty of narrative non-fiction books that I've been eager to read there. I plan to read two narrative non-fiction TBR books in January: The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson, and Haiti After the Earthquake by Paul Farmer. I'll compile a list of probable NNF reads next week, but I had already planned to read these books in 2012:

Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable
Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov
Out of Place by Edward Said
Sizwe's Test: A Young Man's Journey Through Africa's AIDS Epidemic by Jonny Steinberg
The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes
When Doctors Become Patients by Robert Klitzman
Keeper: Living with Nancy. A journey into Alzheimer's by Andrea Gillies
A Disease Apart: Leprosy in the Modern World by Tony Gould
Blue Nights by Joan Didion
Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik
Just Enough Liebling by A.J. Liebling
Collected Works : A Journal of Jazz 1954-2000 by Whitney Balliett
A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor

This is a tentative list, which I'm certain will change significantly over the next few weeks.

Great start over here! I'm not sure I'd include most biographies on the list of NN. One exception would be the new adventure Teddy Roosevelt biography,The River of Doubt, which I'm told is a suspenseful yarn of TR's Amazon experiences. I'll leave this open to discussion.

Dying to read The Warmth of Other Suns -- author is always interesting in interviews.

What about Sarah Vowell's books? What's the best one to start with? -- Jenny

I can't recommend A Time of Gifts and its sequel Between the Woods and the Water highly enough. If there were enough time in the world, I would reread them regularly. I also enjoyed Paris to the Moon. I have The Warmth of Other Suns, Malcolm X, and Haiti after the Earthquake but am not sure when I will get around to them.

ETA Will start my own thread here later today or over the weekend.

Great idea, Darryl and Jenny. And many thanks to Qebo for creating this group. I'm excited that I'm excited about reading non-fiction books. ;-)

Darryl, I'm going to begin with The Spirit Catches You. I bought that book a few years ago specifically for the title and recommendation here on LT. Maybe from you? It's about time I read it.

As for biographies, I'm hoping that Hemingway's Boat qualifies. I'm planning to read it regardless. I can't believe that I'm slowly becoming a Hemingway fan. LT has certainly expanded my reading horizons.

I posted a separate thread for a bit of discussion about nonfiction books that would NOT qualify as "Narrative Nonfiction." Like Donna, I'm excited that I'm excited about expanding my non-fiction reading .... And I wanted to explore the boundaries of the genre a bit more, so I created a separate space for that.

OK... you hooked me! Will be lurking to find delicious NNF ideas - which may become a challenge for me in 2012. Maybe one a month? :}

*makes note to stock up on vitamins, energy drinks, caffeine products and rechargeable body parts (esp eyes) for the coming year*

>7 GCPLreader: I agree, Jenny; most biographies I've read would not count as narrative non-fiction, IMO. I read an excerpt of Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention on NPR's web site, and it reads like a work of fiction to me. I've also noticed that Robert Caro's series of biographical books, The Years of Lyndon Johnson, are considered to be works of NNF, due to their flowing narrative style. So, it seems to me that the literary skill and storytelling ability of the author has a lot to do with whether a book is NNF or non-narrative non-fiction (NNNF?).

>8 rebeccanyc: If I haven't said so already, I'm very glad to see you in this group, Rebecca! You're another person I think of first when I consider people who read a lot of non-fiction. I'll follow your thread closely as well.

>9 Donna828: Hi Donna! I wouldn't be surprised if I was the one who recommended The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down to you. I'll almost certainly read it again this year. Hemingway's Boat certainly qualifies as non-fiction, from what I can tell, and it seems to be more of a narrative than anything else.

>10 EBT1002: Thanks for creating that thread, Ellen. It will certainly help me, and the rest of us I suspect, define what is and what isn't narrative non-fiction.

>11 -Cee-: Hi Claudia! I hope that we'll all get good NNF ideas from each other, and can participate in shared reads from time to time. It seems as though there is a small (and growing) group that wants to read The Warmth of Other Suns in January; if so, maybe we should make a thread for it here.

Although I mentioned that I planned to read 12 NNF books in 2012, I suspect that I'll read at least twice that many. Most of what I read will come from my shelves, in keeping with my theme to reduce my TBR pile in 2012, but I'm sure I'll pick up at least a couple of books on Monday, particularly Up in the Old Hotel and/or McSorley's Wonderful Saloon by Joseph Mitchell, and The John McPhee Reader. I love the nonfiction that appeared in The New Yorker in the mid-20th century, by Mitchell, A.J. Liebling, and, a bit later in the century, by McPhee, and those articles are the best examples of narrative non-fiction, IMO, along with the personal essays by James Baldwin.

#9 I am also a big fan of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down but I read it before I joined LT so I may not have mentioned it here. It's what got me started reading everything Anne Fadiman writes.

I am going to be recording all my nonfiction reads on my thread in this group, not just "narrative nonfiction" whatever that may be.

#12 Thanks, Darryl. I don't think I read a lot of nonfiction, compared to fiction, but I probably read somewhere between 5 and 15 nonfiction books a year and it will be fun to have a place to talk about it.

Well thanks for the push for me to get The Spirit Catches You off my shelves. I'm going to try to get to it in 2012. When I was about to read Robert K. Massie's new bio Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman, I read a review in the NY Times that referred to it as "narrative biography." All I know about NNF is that I know it when I see it. It looks like fiction, reads like fiction, feels like fiction....but it's all true.

I also have A Time of Gifts on my shelf....Yippee!!

I've started reading my first narrative non-fiction book of 2012, A Disease Apart: Leprosy in the Modern World by Tony Gould, a look at the last 200 years of this illness through the lives of several notable physicians, missionaries who cared for those felled by leprosy, and several lepers who lobbied to bring greater public awareness and decreased stigmatization to those who suffered from the effects of the devastating disease. I'll probably read about the illness from one or more textbook or journal articles, and comment about the illness while I'm reading this book.

You're a great one for disease books... Onto the wishlist.
I began The Warmth of Other Suns, yesterday? Expect it'll extend over several weeks.

I got The Warmth of Other Suns from the library - hope to get to that soon.

In the meantime I am reading The Tiger by John Vaillant which fits this category well. About 1/4 of the way through it - quite a story!

I guess I will pick out 12 NNF books for this year and challenge myself. I like NF as well as F, but it has to be reliable and readable. So much NF in the past was blech... I think it's getting much better :) Or maybe I am??? lol

>16 qebo: You're a great one for disease books

Definitely; my LT library has at least 15-20 books about infectious diseases: leprosy, anthrax, yellow fever, polio, influenza, etc. I have a couple of other fiction and nonfiction books about leprosy, including one I haven't read yet, The Colony: The Harrowing True Story of the Exiles of Molokai by John Tayman. I'll be interested to see if Gould discusses this colony in A Disease Apart...yes, he does, in the early part of the book.

>17 -Cee-: The Warmth of Other Suns will be my next narrative non-fiction book; both it and A Disease Apart have been at the top of my TBR pile for the past year or two.

So much NF in the past was blech... I think it's getting much better :)

I agree with you, Claudia; I think that these books are much better written than they were in years past, which is probably due to the talents of the authors writing narrative non-fiction.

Do you have a recommendation on leech therapy, Darryl? I quite like leeches and have been interested in how they've been used in the medical world through history.

>19 cameling: Not offhand, I don't. I think the medical historian Roy Porter may have discussed it in one of his books, but I'm not sure if even one chapter was dedicated to it. I'll look at MDConsult, an online resource for physicians that includes links to medical articles, and forward anything I find to you.

I don't think this one qualifies as a work of narrative non-fiction, but I'll include it here anyway.

A Disease Apart: Leprosy in the Modern World by Tony Gould

In A Disease Apart, Tony Gould describes the history of leprosy, also known as Hansen's disease, over the past 200 years, with a focus on the devastating effects of the disease, the often inhumane conditions in which people infected with Mycobacterium leprae were forced to live, and selected missionaries, physicians and especially patients themselves whose efforts led to improved care and living conditions for people afflicted with leprosy worldwide.

Leprosy has been a feared illness since antiquity, due to the havoc it wreaks upon the body. Unlike infections or illnesses that ravage internal organs, such as its closely related cousin tuberculosis, which is caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, leprosy preferentially infects cooler parts of the body, particularly as the fingers, toes, eyes, nose and testes. The immune system's response to the infection often leads to an intense inflammatory response, which causes severe damage to the superficial nerves in these areas, leading to peripheral neuropathy. As a result, the afflicted person progressively loses sensation in these areas, which ultimately leads to tissue breakdown, ulceration and bacterial superinfection, followed by the loss of fingers and toes, destruction of the structure of the nose, and, in some cases, blindness.

Leprosy remains the most common infection that leads to disability, and its elimination has proven to be difficult, with nearly 250,000 new cases worldwide annually, including approximately 100 new cases in the United States each year. The prevalence (total number of cases) has declined dramatically, due to the introduction of the antibiotic dapsone in the 1940s, widespread distribution of the BCG vaccine for tuberculosis (which also provides protection against Mycobacterium leprae), free distribution of multidrug therapy to all newly diagnosed patients worldwide, and improved recognition and diagnostic techniques. However, in recent years, the incidence (the number of new cases) has not changed significantly. Leprosy is a disease of poverty, and 90% of cases occur in the poorest regions of Brazil, Madagascar, Mozambique, Tanzania and Nepal, which suffer from poor health care and access to medical resources. One to two million people are permanently disabled by the disease, many of whom continue to suffer from ostracism and inadequate care.

In the pre-antibiotic era, the most successful technique to prevent the spread of leprosy was compulsory segregation of those afflicted with the disease. Due largely to the fear of transmission of the disease to healthy individuals, people infected with leprosy were treated as badly if not worse than criminals: they were housed in the most decrepit settlements, which were often ringed with walls and barbed wires, with no protection from the elements, inadequate food and water, and little if any medical care. Those who sought to leave the leprosariums were hunted down like escaped convicts, and forcibly returned. In some extreme cases, the afflicted were gathered under false pretenses, and shot or burned alive en masse.

Gould thoroughly though repetitively describes the barbarous treatment that people infected with leprosy received in countries throughout the world, which differed little from one country to the next, particularly in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The strongest sections of the book are those in which he recounts the lives of those who sacrificed and dedicated their lives to the improvement of leprosy sufferers, particularly Father Damien, a Roman Catholic priest from Belgium who ministered to the colony of lepers in Molokai, Hawai'i before succumbing to the illness himself; John Ruskin Early, a leprous 'religious fanatic, a bigot, and exhibitionist' who tormented public health and government officials with his 'psychotic' behavior, but who also was instrumental in the creation of the national hospital for leprosy victims in Carville, Louisiana; and Stanley Stein, a long term resident at Carville, whose newspaper and frequent articles about the conditions there led to greater public awareness and government support for the disease and its sufferers.

A Disease Apart is a valuable addition to the history of medicine, which describes past and present challenges to the care of those afflicted with leprosy. Although written for the lay public it would be of most interest to those who have a strong interest in the disease or the individuals who were most influential in the advances made in its treatment.

However, in recent years, the incidence (the number of new cases) has not changed significantly.

This is interesting considering the upsurge in tuberculosis in recent years. Nice review.

How are you liking (or not) The Warmth of Other Suns, Darryl?

I haven't started it yet, but I should be able to do some reading tonight.

Darryl, I was reading the 1/9/12 issue of The New Yorker and immediately thought of you. It includes an advertisement for a graduate program (M.S.) in Narrative Medicine offered by Columbia University School of Continuing Education.

From the ad: "The care of the sick unfolds in stories. The effective practice of healthcare requires the narrative competence to recognize, absorb, interpret and act on the stories and experiences of others. Medicine practiced with narrative competence is a model for humane and effective healthcare."

An interesting specialization within the genre of narrative nonfiction.

Thanks, Linda. I saw that advertisement in The New Yorker as well. That's certainly an interesting program, and I would seriously consider enrolling if I still lived and worked in NYC.

India Becoming: A Portrait of Modern India by Akash Kapur



My rating:

Akash Kapur is a prolific writer who has written for several of the world's leading publications, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Economist and Granta. He was born in India, was educated at Harvard and Oxford, and worked in New York for over a decade before he and his wife returned to India in 2003.

Starting in 1991, India underwent a dramatic transformation in response to financial crisis, from a socialist system plagued by nepotism, corruption and underdevelopment to a Western based capitalist system, in which government and private investors worked together to create a rapidly growing economy based largely on information technology, start up companies and real estate development in large cities such as Bangalore and Chennai, and in suburbs and smaller cities.

Kapur describes the transformed country in India Becoming through the lives of several people: Sathy, the descendant of a powerful landowning family, whose influence and importance wane as his region changes from an agricultural economy to one based on real estate and the purchase of cows for consumption; his wife Banu, a well educated woman who moves to Bangalore to take advantage of better schools for their children and to work as a professional; Das, a Dalit man born in extreme poverty as a member of the untouchable class, who became an independent businessman and rose to the middle class; Hari, a young man who uses his education and knowledge of English to flourish in the booming IT based economy and finds freedom as a gay man in the city; and Selvi, a naïve young woman from a rural town who works at a call center for American credit card holders, who experiences independence and tragedy in her daily struggles.

Through them, other characters, and Kapur's personal accounts, we learn about the often devastating effects that the new India has upon individuals, towns and cities, and the environment. The country's agriculture and small farmers suffer mightily, as farmers are forced out of business and their lands are purchased by real estate developers, who employ mobs of young men to intimidate and assault those who aren't willing to sell their property. Disputes are increasingly settled by violence and murder, as the police are ineffective or collusory and village leaders no longer command respect. Cheap disposable plastic is used increasingly by residents of large cities and is burned in large landfills in smaller towns, whose residents, including Kapur, suffer from the fumes they generate. Worst of all, the plight of the most impoverished does not improve, as the new economy favors the most entrepreneurial and well educated individuals.

Kapur's initial excitement and optimism about the new India are progressively dampened with time, and many of the individuals chronicled in the book suffer as a result of the decline of global economy in the late 2000s.

India Becoming is a superb and enlightening look into the new India, whose narrative style and interesting characters captivated me from the first page onward. The people that Kapur features are mainly privileged middle class people and educated young professionals, and it is not until the end that he describes, briefly, the life of several people who live alongside the landfill that spews toxic fumes onto his community. This lack of balance makes me that much more eager to read Katherine Boo's new book, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, to learn more about the lives of the poorest members of Indian society.

27: Both books about India are on my wishlist, for balance as you say.

Fragile Beginnings: Discoveries and Triumphs in the Newborn ICU by Adam Wolfberg, MD



My rating:

Adam Wolfberg was an OB-GYN intern at Harvard's Brigham and Women's Hospital when his wife, Kelly, was pregnant with their third child, a girl who would be named Larissa. Her previous two pregnancies were uneventful, and all indicators pointed to another straightforward one. However, Kelly suddenly developed contractions when Larissa reached 26 weeks of gestation, 14 weeks before her due date. Despite the Wolfbergs' proximity to one of the leading obstetric and neonatal centers in the world, Kelly's labor could not be reversed, and Larissa was born after a very traumatic and stressful delivery. She was stabilized in the delivery room, placed on a mechanical ventilator due to her inability to breathe on her own, and whisked away to the NICU (or neonatal ICU; a neonate is a baby 0-28 days of age) at Brigham and Women's. Her birth weight was 1 lb 15 oz, making her tiny enough to fit into the palm of her father's hand.

From his training, Adam knew that a baby as premature as Larissa faced serious complications, including cerebral palsy; epilepsy; severe developmental delay that could prevent her from being able to walk, talk, eat by mouth or function independently; and death. One of his greatest fears was realized within days of Larissa's birth, when she developed a severe intracranial hemorrhage, or brain bleed, within the first week of life, due to the trauma of her labor. This injury is always associated with some degree of impairment; however, the extent of the damage is often not known for a year or more, once the baby begins to sit, crawl, walk and perform routine activities of daily living. Thus, the neonatologists and neurologists caring for Larissa could not give the Wolfbergs a definite answer on her future prognosis, leaving them with the difficult decision to withdraw care, or to continue to do everything possible for her.

In Fragile Beginnings, Dr. Wolfberg discusses his daughter's early years and how her premature birth has affected her and his family, while discussing the history, politics and ethics of the care of severely (less than 32 weeks of gestation) and extremely (less than 28 weeks) premature infants born in the United States. Normal gestational age is 37-42 weeks, dating from the first day of the last menstrual period. These babies normally don't have any complications during or after birth. Babies born at 32-36 weeks of gestation generally do well, although a small percentage have minor complications, particularly infant respiratory distress syndrome or chronic lung disease, due to the immaturity of the lungs and the relative lack of surfactant, a substance that keeps the alveoli (air sacs) in the deepest parts of the lungs from collapsing. Many of you will remember that John F. and Jacqueline Kennedy's last child, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, born 5½ weeks premature (or 34½ weeks of gestation), died on his second day of life in 1963 due to hyaline membrane disease, the old name for respiratory distress syndrome, due to a lack of surfactant in his lungs. In 2012, the mother of a baby born at this age would receive a corticosteroid injection to increase the production of surfactant in her baby's lungs, and he would likely survive his premature birth with few if any complications. The author discusses the discovery of surfactant, along with the major developments that have allowed thousands of babies similar to and much worse off than Patrick survive and have meaningful and healthy lives.

Needless to say, the more premature a neonate is at the time of birth, the greater is the chance of significant morbidity or mortality. However, as mentioned above, it is impossible to determine which extremely premature infants will do relatively well, and which will suffer severe complications. Doctors generally consider 22-23 weeks of gestational age or those who weigh 400 grams to be the limits of viability, and those who are less than this age or weight are normally delivered and handed to the mother by the pediatrician to die naturally in her arms. The obstetrician, pediatrician and parents can find themselves in an extremely difficult position in the case of infants who are at these limits, as they must decide which infant should live and which should be allowed to die. In most cases the doctors follow the wishes of the parents, once they are provided with information about the medical possibilities and probabilities for their child. However, there are times in which the parents and medical staff do not agree with each other; some families wish to do everything possible for a babies that the doctors believe are nonviable, and other families wish to withdraw or withhold care for babies that the doctors expect will have a relatively good outcome. Dr. Wolfberg discusses several famous cases and subsequent government laws passed in the 1980s and 1990s that have affected how obstetricians and neonatologists manage the extremely premature infant on the edge of viability.

Finally but most significantly, Dr. Wolfberg discusses new developments in the field of neuroplasticity, in which the central nervous system makes new connections in order to overcome injury. The highly educated and motivated—and financially stable—Wolfbergs were able to travel to get the best and most advanced therapies for Larissa, and work with her for several hours every day to maximize her physical and intellectual development.

Fragile Beginnings is a superb book about severely and extremely premature infants, their care, and the challenges they, their families, and their caregivers face. The author's own experience as a father of an extremely premature infant and as an obstetrician who provides care to mothers of high risk pregnancies greatly enhances and humanizes this important topic. Although designed for the lay reader, there is a good amount of medicine and neuroanatomy that may challenge the average reader without a strong science background at certain points in the book. However, I would still highly recommend this book to all readers, as the story of Larissa and her family is both riveting and highly inspirational.

There was a New Yorker article about premature infants not too long ago... assume you read it. Incredible. The combo of personal and professional would be compelling, the emotions and the expertise.

When the Garden Was Eden: Clyde, the Captain, Dollar Bill, and the Glory Days of the New York Knicks by Harvey Araton



My rating:

Warning: This review is sullied by shameless and completely biased hero worship. Non-sports fans or fans of the Baltimore Bullets, Boston Celtics or Los Angeles Lakers are advised to move on to the next message.

The New York Knickerbockers or Knicks (named after the fictional narrator in Washington Irving's satirical novel Knickerbocker's History of New York), one of the original teams of the National Basketball Association (NBA), has been in continuous existence since 1946. The early Knicks teams were competitive, playing in three consecutive NBA Finals from 1951-1953, but lost each series to a superior foe. The Knicks then sunk into mediocrity from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, playing before sparse and largely uninterested crowds at the old Madison Square Garden and the 69th Regiment Armory. The low point of the franchise occurred 50 years ago this month, when Philadelphia Warriors center Wilt Chamberlain set an as yet unbroken NBA record by scoring 100 points against the Knicks in a 169-147 shellacking on March 2, 1962.

New Yorkers were avid basketball fans in the mid-20th century, but they reserved their passion for the powerful local college teams at City College (CCNY), St. John's, LIU, NYU, Fordham and Manhattan, until a notorious point shaving scandal in 1951 led to the de-emphasis of basketball at several schools.

Beginning in 1964, the Knicks' fortune would begin to change. Willis Reed, a center from historically black Grambling College in Louisiana, was selected in the second round. Reed would later be named captain of the Knicks, and served as the team's linchpin during its glory years from 1967-1973. Unorthodox and brash shooting guard Dick Barnett joined the team the following year. Coach Red Holzman assumed responsibility for the flagging team midway through the 1967-68 season; his steady hand and willingness to allow his savvy and highly intelligent team to run its own plays and determine how it should attack each opponent's best players directly led to the team's success and the loyalty his players afforded him. The Knicks acquired two essential players in the 1967 draft: Walt Frazier, a superb shooting guard and defensive wizard from Southern Illinois, and Phil Jackson, a long and lanky defensive specialist from North Dakota, who would become famous as the coach of the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers, winning 11 NBA titles. The All-American and future New Jersey senator and presidential candidate Bill Bradley, who was drafted in 1965 but left Princeton to attend Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, also began his NBA career that season. The following season brought forward Dave DeBusschere from the Detroit Pistons, a blue collar scorer and defender who also served as the Pistons' coach and as a pitcher for the Chicago White Sox.

With the essential pieces in place, the team improved dramatically over the next two seasons, as regular fans, along with celebrities such as Woody Allen, Elliott Gould and Dustin Hoffman, packed the new Madison Square Garden. The Knicks' success energized and united New Yorkers, who often found themselves divided over the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, and the city's growing financial crisis.

The 1969-70 team burst out of the gate, winning 23 of its first 24 games en route to a 60-22 regular season. The Knicks defeated the Baltimore Bullets and the Milwaukee Bucks in the first and second rounds of the NBA playoffs, and then faced the powerful Los Angeles Lakers, led by future Hall of Famers Elgin Baylor, Jerry West and Wilt Chamberlin. Both teams were hungry for a championship; the Knicks had never won an NBA title and hadn't been to the Finals since 1953, whereas the Lakers hadn't earned hardware since 1954, losing in the Finals in six of the previous eight seasons. The teams split the first four games of the series, and appeared to be evenly matched until Game 5, when Willis Reed tore a thigh muscle. Somehow the Knicks battled back from a 10 point deficit without Reed to defeat the Lakers. With Reed on the bench, the New Yorkers were thoroughly outclassed in Game 6, setting up a deciding Game 7 in Madison Square Garden before 19,500 partisan spectators and a national television audience. One question resided on the lips of everyone who watched, listened to or participated in that game (including this 9 year old diehard Knicks fan and his father): would Willis Reed play?

When the Garden Was Eden, written by a long time sports reporter for the Post, the Daily News and the New York Times, is at heart a love story about the great Knicks teams of the late 1960s to early 1970s, who overcame a lack of height and team speed by playing unselfish basketball that is almost foreign to the current crop of highly paid, self centered superstars who would rather take a contested shot than throw a pass to an open teammate. Araton's 40+ year career following the Knicks, many of whom remain close friends, allows the reader to learn about the lives of its stars and supporting players, the coaches and owners, the supporting staff of broadcasters, trainers, and office workers, and the fans who supported the "Old Knicks" and the newer, less talented and successful, versions that followed. Araton places his book in the context of the societal strife that surrounded and touched the players, and shows how racial differences affected many of them personally, but did not affect their relationships with each other or the chemistry of the team, unlike many other collegiate and professional teams during that time. Fans of the Knicks, especially those like me who grew up watching these great teams at MSG or on television or listening to Marv Albert's radio broadcasts on WNEW ("Yes! And it counts!"), will love and cherish this book. However, other sports fans, especially those interested in or familiar with the history of the NBA during that period, will also find a lot to enjoy in this engaging and inspirational work.

Walk on Water: Inside an Elite Pediatric Surgical Unit by Michael Ruhlman



My rating:

Author and journalist Michael Ruhlman's fascination with people at the top of their professions, who seek perfection in themselves and those around them, led a friend of his to refer him to Dr. Roger Mee, the head of pediatric cardiothoracic surgery at the Cleveland Clinic and one of the world's best heart surgeons. Ruhlman spent two months shadowing Dr. Mee, his colleagues and assistants in the OR and the PICU (pediatric intensive care unit), and the parents who entrusted him with the lives of their very sick children.

The children chronicled in Walk on Water are young infants born with complex congenital heart defects, who are gravely ill and have been referred to Dr. Mee in a last ditch effort to save their lives. Ruhlman observes and effectively describes the preoperative angst and despair of the parents, the drama during these babies' difficult surgeries, which are fraught with unforeseeable challenges and unexpected consequences, and the occasionally uncertain postoperative recovery of the sickest patients.

Ruhlman also attempts to understand and describe what makes Mee and other leading pediatric cardiac surgeons and heart centers as good as they are, and compares them to other surgeons and centers who have markedly higher perioperative and postoperative morbidity and mortality rates. He also gives the reader a history of pediatric cardiothoracic surgery, by depicting the leading surgeons and groundbreaking procedures that permitted the field to make tremendous advances over the past 75 years.

Unfortunately, the author is not as successful in these goals. He does portray Mee as a complex man, who is perceived by his peers as arrogant and difficult, but a man who beats up on himself and becomes depressed whenever he doesn't live up to his lofty standards, and looks forward to a time when his services are no longer required. He also paints a compelling portrait of Mike Fackelmann, the physician assistant and right hand man to Mee, whose presence in the OR is invaluable to the great surgeon. However, Ruhlman frequently gets caught up in the cowboy mentality of the all male enclave of cardiothoracic surgeons, whose descriptions of themselves and Mee as God like figures and star athletes were repetitive and often in poor taste, and detracted from the far more effective narratives of the main characters in the book. Ruhlman's lack of medical training is most apparent when he attempts to describe the surgical procedures, which made these sections boring and overly lengthy.

Walk on Water is an interesting but somewhat disappointing look into the field of pediatric cardiothoracic surgery and the career of one of its leading practitioners. The excellent narratives of those featured in this book are diminished by the author's lack of detailed medical knowledge of the pathophysiology of complex congenital heart defects and his tendency to repeat points that were previously covered. Ruhlman is to be commended for tackling a difficult topic, and I would marginally recommend this book for anyone who is interested in this field.

Panther Baby by Jamal Joseph



My rating:

Note: This review contains numerous spoilers and detailed information about the author's life and the history of Black Panther Party. Anyone who is seriously thinking of reading this book may want to skim it, or skip it altogether.

This gripping and inspiring memoir begins in New York City in 1968. Eddie Joseph, a 15 year old boy being raised by his doting and deeply religious grandmother, excels in school, but his experiences as a young child make him aware of the racial turmoil that exists within and outside of his "up south" community in the Bronx. As a first grader, he innocently kisses a white girl on the way home from school, and her parents then forbid her to ever speak to him again. During a summer trip to visit his grandmother's relatives in rural Virginia, he bloodies the nose of a white bully, who turns out to be the son of a local Ku Klux Klan leader, and he is forced to take the first bus back to New York after several KKK members pay a less than cordial visit to his aunt's house that evening.

Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination in May of 1968 radicalized many young blacks in America, and young Eddie was no exception. The Black Power movement had been gaining in strength and importance since 1966, when Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) chairman Stokely Carmichael first used the term to describe an alternative movement to Dr. King's Civil Rights movement, one which emphasized black solidarity in order to achieve political equality and socioeconomic independence. After seeing the Black Panthers on television, he is attracted by the young men wearing berets and leather jackets and toting guns, as they defiantly protest California legislators and policemen who wish to take away their constitutional right to bear arms. Eddie then decides to join the organization, along with his closest friends.

Eddie adopts the name Jamal, and becomes a devoted and respected young leader within the New York City chapter of the Black Panther Party. His youthful exuberance and radicalism is both encouraged and tempered by several older Panther leaders, most notably Afeni Shakur, one of the most influential women in the organization, whose own fame would be superseded by that of her son Tupac. The Panthers serve a vital purpose within black communities in the city, providing free breakfast and after-school programs for school children, distributing food to needy families, organizing tenants in substandard and unsafe housing to stand up for their right to live decently, combating the influx of illegal drugs in the community, and aiding individuals in need of medical care or legal aid, while distributing literature and eliciting donations to support their activities. Although many Americans viewed the Black Panther Party as a dangerous and subversive organization, liberal whites and Jews including Jane Fonda, Norman Mailer and Leonard Bernstein recognize their good work, and hold fund raising parties in their name.

The Panthers' more radical activities, particularly in Oakland and Chicago, come to the attention of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who proclaims that "{t}he Black Panther Party without question is the greatest threat to the internal security of the country." Local police, aided and encouraged by FBI agents, begin to crack down on Panther chapters throughout the country, raiding local Panther offices and engaging in shootouts with them, which include the notorious assassination of Chicago Panther leader Fred Hampton, who is shot to death at night, unarmed, as he sleeps alongside his pregnant girlfriend.

In April of 1969, Jamal and 20 other Panther leaders, known subsequently as the Panther 21, are arrested and charged with conspiracy to bomb several public building and to commit murder. The case draws local and national attention, as most blacks and liberal whites believe the charges are without merit. Jamal is eventually freed after several months of imprisonment along with several others, and the remaining incarcerated members of the Panther 21 are acquitted of all charges by a grand jury, which needed only 45 minutes of deliberation to find them free of guilt.

Jamal resumes his activities in the Party, but finds that the organization, both locally and nationally, has been fractured, due to the FBI's successful efforts to infiltrate it. This sowed widespread distrust and dissension within the Party, particularly between its West Coast and East Coast sections, and culminated in a split between Eldridge Cleaver, who favored revolution and violence, and Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, David Hilliard and others, who preferred to focus on community development and education. As a result, the local chapters' positive influences on the community wane in the early and mid 1970s, and the influx of illegal drugs, along with the migration of middle class blacks from inner city communities, increased unemployment, and cutbacks in city programs due to the worsening recession, decimate the inner city neighborhoods of New York City and most American cities.

He is arrested again, as he and other Panthers attempt to break up a local drug den by armed force, and he receives a 12 year sentence. He serves the majority of his prison time at Leavenworth, the largest maximum security federal prison in the United States, alongside the most dangerous of criminals, many of whom will never leave the prison alive. He begins to study and read intensely, writes several plays for fellow inmates, and obtains a bachelor's degree from the University of Kansas, graduating summa cum laude. Upon his release in 1987 he moves back to New York, where he reunites with his wife and children. He is hired by Touro College as a professor and counselor, writes several screenplays, which win several awards and earn him a fellowship in playwriting, and is subsequently hired to teach screenwriting at Columbia University, where he continues to work as a professor in the School of Arts.

Panther Baby is a fascinating account of a remarkable life, which kept my rapt attention from the first page to the last. Joseph is a gifted writer, and this book provided me with a succinct yet excellent insider's analysis of the Black Panther Party, the life of a former Panther, and the measure of this inspiring man. This is one of the best memoirs I've ever read, and I can't recommend it highly enough.

*sigh* Another one for the ever-expanding wishlist...

Ditto

Hi Darryl- I only skimmed your review of Panther Baby,(because I plan on reading it) but this book sounds fantastic. You can still write a heck of a review!

34,35: Yeah, me to.

>36 msf59: Thanks, Mark! Writing reviews isn't easy for me, and it frequently takes me far longer than it should. That review took roughly two hours to finish.

I hope that all of you read, and enjoy, Panther Baby.

Yay and my library has Panther Baby Thanks for the review! Great thread!

I very much enjoyed Panther Baby! It was a great read. and low and behold, I turned on the tv and there was Jamal Joseph! What timing. Here is a link to the interview on booktv:

http://booktv.org/Program/13193/Panther+Baby+A+Life+of+Rebellion+Reinvention.asp...

Thanks for the link to the BookTV interview! I'll look at it later this week. I'm glad that you also enjoyed Panther Baby.

God's Hotel: A Doctor, a Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine by Victoria Sweet



My rating:


The original Lagunda Honda Hospital

Laguna Honda Hospital was built in San Francisco in 1867 as an almshouse, which provided medical and spiritual care and a sense of community to the early residents of the city who could no longer support themselves. After it served as a place of refuge for many of the survivors of the devastating 1906 earthquake, Laguna Honda was rebuilt in 1909 as a 1,178 bed facility at the base of Twin Peaks, making it one of the largest almshouses in the United States throughout the 20th century.

The concept of the almshouse dates back to medieval Europe, as a Christian tradition that existed in most larger communities. These almshouses, initially run by monks and nuns, became the earliest hospitals, the most famous being the Hôtel-Dieu de Paris, which was founded in the year 659 and remains in existence today.


Lagunda Honda Hospital, built in 1909

Lagunda Honda Hospital's main focus was on long term comprehensive care for people with dementia, traumatic brain injury, and end-stage illnesses such as cancer, alcoholic cirrhosis and, in later years, AIDS. It also provided rehabilitative care for patients with non-life threatening conditions whose physical limitations, lack of caretakers, poverty and homelessness, mental illness or substance abuse did not allow them to recuperate fully at home. Most of its residents lived there for months and years; some succumbed to a peaceful death surrounded by family members and hospital staff, and many were released to a supportive environment after they were physically and spiritually healed.

Victoria Sweet was a newly minted internal medicine physician who sought a position in which she could practice on a part time basis while she pursued a doctoral degree in the history of medicine. She was somewhat familiar with Laguna Honda from her medical training, but was skeptical that practicing in an almshouse was the right fit for her. She accepted a temporary two month position, and more than 20 years later she continues to practice there.

God's Hotel is Sweet's chronicle of her career at Laguna Honda, the patients, staff and colleagues who taught and enriched her, and the transformation of the hospital from one of the last almshouses in the United States to a newly built hospital and rehabilitation center. The hospital's changed mission coincides with the transition from 20th century medicine provided to patients by doctors, nurses and ancillary staff, to 21st century health care management, in which hospital administrators, government officials, insurance companies, efficiency experts and lawyers dictate what services "clients" should receive from the "system".


The new Laguna Honda Hospital and Rehabilitation Center, circa 2010

The author also describes her study of Hildegard of Blingen, a 12th century nun, theologian and medical practitioner, who wrote a textbook about medicine that combined the "four humors" theory of premodern medicine with her own knowledge of medical botanicals. Sweet's study of Hldegard formed the basis of her PhD in the history of medicine and resulted in an award winning book, Rooted in the Earth, Rooted in the Sky: Hildegard of Bingen and Premodern Medicine. In addition, Sweet also embarked on a pilgrimage from Le Puy in southwestern France to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, a 1200-mile journey based on a medieval route originally taken by St. James. She describes these two intellectual and physical journeys in detail, and how they influenced the care of her patients and her view of the ideal practice of inpatient medicine for chronically ill patients, one in which holistic and deliberate care (which she describes as "slow medicine") rather than stabilization and rapid discharge could be shown to be more cost effective, due to lower readmission rates and decreased cost of unnecessary outpatient medications.

God's Hotel is a powerful rebuttal and a loving testament from a wise and sensitive doctor practicing "in the trenches", one who works diligently to provide the best care to her patients, while bemoaning the negative effects of health care reform and the influence of bureaucrats who make untoward decisions by evaluating data rather than communicating directly with patients and those who provide direct care to them.

Being Sam Frears: A Life Less Ordinary by Mary Mount



My rating:

I read an article in the online edition of yesterday's Observer (UK), which was an excerpt from a new e-book about a man with familial dysautonomia (FD), a rare autosomal recessive genetic disorder that mainly affects people of Eastern European Jewish descent. One in 27 of these individuals are silent carriers of the FD gene, as they carry one bad FD gene and one normal gene, and they are not affected by the disorder. If two FD carriers marry and each passes on the bad gene to the fetus, the newborn child will have this disorder. It has a variety of physical manifestations that affect the autonomic nervous system, which controls the function of a variety of different organ systems. Affected individuals have problems controlling their blood pressure and heart rate, and frequently have difficulty swallowing liquids and digesting foods. They also do not make tears, which can lead to progressive blindness, and have a decreased ability to sense pain. The average life span is 15 years, and 50% live to the age of 40. Affected individuals are generally intellectually normal, despite their numerous physical afflictions. Unfortunately, there is no known cure for this disorder.

The author was introduced by a mutual friend to Sam Frears, a Londoner who had recently celebrated his 40th birthday. She befriended him as well, and accompanied him as he participated in his usual activities of daily living. Sam is fortunate on one hand, as he was born to two prominent parents, Mary-Kay Wilmers, the editor of the London Review of Books, and the film director Stephen Frears, who took him to see the best specialists in the UK and the US after his diagnosis was eventually made. Sam relies on others to get about, due to difficulty in walking independently and progressive blindness, yet he leads a full and rich life, working as an actor and remaining physically active to maintain his body as best he can. He accepts his condition with grace and an infectious joie de vivre, along with an ability to laugh at himself that would be laudable for a person who wasn't so afflicted.

Being Sam Frears, one of the new series of Penguin eSpecials, was a touching and inspiring albeit brief look into the life of a very able disabled person, who is determined to live as normal a life as possible for as long as he can. The author did a superb job in portraying Sam and those who befriend, love and support him without pitying or coddling him.

Observer article and excerpt from Being Sam Frears: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jul/01/sam-frears-a-life-less-ordinary-ex...

Book #68: The Making of Modern Medicine: Turning Points in the Treatment of Disease by Michael Bliss



My rating:

This short work by noted medical historian Michael Bliss of the University of Toronto focuses on three events that led to the transformation of the public view of medicine in North America, from a profession that was often powerless to alter the course of serious illnesses in the late 19th century, to one in which scientific advances and changes in medical education led to the possibility of cure of dreaded diseases and, more importantly, the hope for further cures in the early 20th century.

Bliss first describes the smallpox epidemic in Montréal in 1885, a disease preventable by vaccination at that time, which claimed the lives of over 3,000 residents within the city's limits in less than one year. The majority of the deaths did not occur among the poorest residents, who were largely vaccinated by their personal physicians in childhood. Instead, the victims were concentrated in the French Canadian population within and outside of Montréal, who erroneously believed that vaccination against smallpox was a dangerous tool designed by the English speaking medical community to sicken them. This opinion was supported and encouraged by several anti-vaccinationists in the French Canadian community, whose proclamations were eerily similar to those of the current lot of scaremongers in the anti-vaccine community.

The second story concerns the career of William Osler, the "father of modern medicine", who was trained and later taught at McGill University, before he accepted a position as Physician in Chief at the new Johns Hopkins Hospital and Medical School. Johns Hopkins was founded by a wealthy philanthropist, and the medical school was based on the training methods of the prestigious schools in Europe; as a result, Hopkins became the gold standard for medical education in the United States, even superseding the University of Pennsylvania, the oldest medical college in North America. Osler, one of the "Big Four" founding professors at Johns Hopkins Medical School, wrote the famed textbook The Principles and Practice of Medicine as he waited for the medical school to admit its first students, which was published in 1892 and continues to be widely read today; created the clerkship system, in which medical students moved from the classroom and laboratory to the hospital wards and clinics to observe direct patient care; and instituted the modern internship and residency programs for medical school graduates. His teaching methods, thoughtful approach to the patient and collegial collaboration with other specialists continue to be practiced and taught to this day.

The final segment describes the discovery of insulin by Frederick Banting and his colleagues at the University of Toronto in 1922. The hormone was isolated from pancreatic extracts, purified, and then tested on diabetic animals. It was first administered to a human patient at the Hospital for Sick Children in January of that year, and it had an immediate and long lasting effect, as the then teenage boy would live for another 13 years. The most famous of Banting's early patients was Elizabeth Hughes, the 15 year old daughter of the US Secretary of State Charles Hughes, who was close to death from starvation, the standard treatment for diabetes in August 1922, as she weighed only 45 pounds. She was brought to Toronto and administered insulin, which led to a remarkable recovery. Hughes went on to lead a full and active life until her death in 1981 at the age of 73. Banting was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1923 at the age of 32, and he remains the youngest Nobel laureate in this field.

At just over 100 pages, The Making of Modern Medicine serves best as an introduction to Bliss and his previous books, on which this one is based, and to the reader with little or no knowledge of the history of North American medicine. Thanks to this book I will read William Osler: A Life in Medicine and Harvey Cushing: A Life in Surgery, Bliss's noted biographies of these two giants of medicine, in the near future.

Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on Mississippi's Gulf Coast by Natasha Trethewey



My rating:

Natasha Trethewey, the newly selected Poet Laureate of the U.S. and current professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University, wrote this book, a combination of memoir, history and elegy, about her family and other residents of the Mississippi Gulf Coast, which was decimated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Although the eye of the storm made landfall in Louisiana, the brunt of the winds and the associated coastal flooding was felt in cities such as Bay St. Louis, Pass Christian, Gulfport and Biloxi, Mississippi. Over 90% of these towns were flooded, and nearly all private residences and public buildings suffered moderate to severe damage. At least 235 people were killed in the state as a result, and the region continues to feel the effects of the storm seven years later.

Natasha Trethewey grew up in North Gulfport, a mostly African-American portion of the city, from the mid 1960s to the early 1980s. Although racial segregation and discrimination was formally outlawed by the time of her birth, its effects lingered in the Deep South for many years afterward, as many blacks continued to frequent stores owned by their neighbors and to employ local tradesmen. One of these men was her great-uncle Willie Dixon, known as "Son" to his family and neighbors, who used his earnings from his nightclub to repair, buy and sell rental properties in North Gulfport.

Her younger brother Joe took over the family business after Uncle Son's death, and his story of steady success followed by devastation and tragedy is the central element of this book. Although federal funding was allocated to the residents of central and southern Mississippi, government officials and local politicians diverted much of it to the wealthier residents and the growing tourism and gambling industries, leaving behind many of the region's poorer residents, both black and white. Trethewey describes the mismanagement of the coastal wetland by local developers, and how it contributed to the disastrous flooding. People employed as service workers by the gambling industry and in construction suffered mightily, as they lost their jobs and their homes in less than 48 hours. Many got their jobs back, but property owners increased their rents substantially, leaving many of them unable to pay their bills. Local businessmen, particularly in North Gulfport, were also adversely affected, due to ordinances that permitted the city to take over their land if their owners decided to rebuild their damaged properties.

Trethewey occasionally refers to an unforgettable quote by fellow Southern writer Flannery O'Connor to describe the feelings she and her fellow Mississippians shared in the aftermath of Katrina: "Where you came from came from is gone. Where you thought you were going to never was there. And where you are is no good unless you can get away from it." She also uses her own formidable skill as a poet to tell the stories of those whose lives have been ruined by the storm, such as Tamara Jones in her poem Believer:

The house is in need of repair, but is—
for now, she says—still hers. After the storm,
she laid hands on what she could reclaim:
the iron table and chairs etched with rust,
the dresser laced with mold. Four years gone,
she's still rebuilding the shed out back
and sorting through boxes in the kitchen—
a lifetime of bills and receipts, deeds
and warranties, notices spread on the table,
a barrage of red ink: PAST DUE. Now,
the house is a museum of everything.

she can't let go: a pile of photographs—
fused and peeling—water stains blurring
the handwritten names of people she can't recall;
a drawer crowded with funeral programs
and church fans, rubber bands and paper sleeves
for pennies, nickels, and dimes. What stops me
is the stack of tithing envelopes. Reading my face,
she must know I can't see why—even now—
she tithes, why she keeps giving to the church.
First seek the kingdom of God, she tells me,
and the rest will follow—says it twice

as if to make a talisman of her words.

She closes the book on a hopeful note, despite the serious trouble her brother finds himself in, and the reader is left with the sense that the survivors of Katrina will fight back against the odds and reclaim their livelihood and the heritage that defines the proud state of Mississippi.

Beyond Katrina is a powerful testament and statement by this uniquely gifted writer, whose talent will now receive wider attention in her new position as America's poet laureate. I look forward to her upcoming poetry collection Thrall, which will explore her relationship with her white father, a professor of poetry at Hollins College, and her experiences as an interracial child and young woman.