Tag Archives: Autobiography

BOOK REVIEW: Dark Tourist by Hasanthika Sirisena

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Dark Tourist: EssaysDark Tourist: Essays by Hasanthika Sirisena
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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This collection of, mostly autobiographical, essays rambles over a territory that includes: grief, the immigrant experience, sexuality, art and catharsis, and the profound impact of self-perception on one’s experience of life. The title most directly links to one of the more evocative essays, “Confessions of a Dark Tourist,” which is about the author’s travels back to her native country, Sri Lanka, to visit the northern region where a vicious civil war played out most intensely. [For those unfamiliar with the term, “dark tourism” is travel to areas that have recently experienced upheaval due to war, economic collapse, intranational conflict, or large-scale accidents and disasters.]

I used the term “rambles” in my opening sentence, and these essays (even within essays) can take the reader places a lawyer would object to on the grounds of relevance. That said, it’s a far better thing to be rambling and interesting than tidy and dull, and this book does a good job of keeping it interesting, using stories that are (I presume) meant to symbolically link to a point at hand. Sometimes, that symbolism hits, and sometimes it might not, but it does make for a compelling read. The author is valiantly candid about her personal struggles, particularly as they pertain to issues of self-perception owing to a lazy eye and her [bi-] sexuality.

If you’re a reader of essays and creative nonfiction, I’d recommend you give this book a look.


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BOOK REVIEW: The Chimpanzee Whisperer by Stany Nyandwi w/ David Blissett

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I Am Stany: The Life and Loves of a Chimpanzee WhispererI Am Stany: The Life and Loves of a Chimpanzee Whisperer by Stany Nyandwi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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Out: February 22, 2022

These are the memoirs of a man who made a career from his ability to read and interact with chimpanzees. However, lest one expect a Gerald Durrell-style book filled with amusing animal anecdotes and witty lessons on how to build a zoo, one should note that Stany Nyandwi faced poverty and many a tragedy in his life that make this animal-interest book also a human-interest story from cover to cover. [Note: There are many chimpanzee stories and insights into how sanctuaries and reserves are run, but they are interspersed with visceral tales of calamity and sorrow.]

The book tells of Stany’s youth in Burundi, a country that would fall into a vicious civil war as he came of age and then got the first job that might pull him out of brutal poverty (into regular poverty,) working as a laborer at a chimpanzee sanctuary. It wasn’t long before the sanctuary had to be shut down because of the dangers of the war between Tutsis and Hutus. Because his work ethic and talent with chimps had begun to show, he was offered jobs first in Kenya and then in Uganda. Traveling with the sanctuary chimps would separate him from his family (a wife and children, not to mention his parents and siblings) during the worst years of the war, leading him down a self-destructive path for a time, but then things seem to improve. Always when one thinks his life is settling into a healthy stability, there’s a spanner into the works. Yet, the author keeps finding the bright side, and being saved by that positivity and his gift for working with chimpanzees, a gift which makes him a man in demand despite his lack of education or resources.

This book is an emotional roller-coaster ride, but throughout we are saved by the author’s indefatigable positivity and humanity – perhaps, the traits that allowed him to get along so well with the chimpanzees. I’d highly recommend it for all readers.


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BOOK REVIEW: Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

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Born a Crime: Stories From a South African ChildhoodBorn a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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As a rule, I don’t read books by celebrities. This is the first one I can remember reading. My reasoning is rooted in publishers’ beliefs that such books will sell no matter what, and anything that doesn’t have to be good is unlikely to be.

And yet, I’m glad I made an exception for this book. Perhaps, because it’s not a book about Noah’s rise to fame, there are only a few off-hand references to his early career successes in South Africa. This book is about his youth in South Africa as a mixed-race child under Apartheid (hence the title, as such interracial progeny were illegal.) The book focuses heavily on race and the bizarre logic of South African governance during those days, as well as how rulers set groups against each other to make their own misbehavior less conspicuous. However, it’s also a very personal story, telling of his close relationship with his mother, the abuse he and his mother suffered from his drunkard stepfather, and the challenges that compelled him to adapt to survive loneliness and the awkwardness of youth.

Given Noah’s comedic merits, it will come as no surprise that the book is humorous, despite the tonal burden of its subject matter – i.e. racism, poverty, and abuse. Often, the subject matter makes the humor dark and bitter, but it’s nevertheless amusing.

If you’re curious about life under apartheid, or in an abusive household, you’ll likely find yourself in the grips of this tense and hilarious memoir.


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BOOK REVIEW: Breathe by Rickson Gracie

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Breathe: A Life in FlowBreathe: A Life in Flow by Rickson Gracie
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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Out: August 10, 2021

This autobiography of the phenomenal Brazilian Ju Jutsu practitioner, Rickson Gracie, begins with ancestral origins that include a Gracie who fought in the US Civil War through Rickson’s boyhood in Rio and his professional fights in Japan, and onward to how he reinvented himself after family tragedy and the end of his fight career. Along the way, he conveys lessons learned not only through personal experience and from his father and uncle, the founders of Gracie Ju Jutsu, but also through his studies with Olando Cani — a yogi and developer of bioginastica. While the book is overwhelmingly about a life in Ju Jutsu, Cani’s influence plays a crucial role as the yogi taught Rickson about breath control, and, among a huge pack of skilled Gracie fighters, that ability was pivotal in Rickson’s rise to the top. (The book’s title, “Breathe,” hints at the role breathwork played in Rickson Gracie’s legendary capacities for enduring, flowing, and keeping his head in seemingly unfavorable situations.)

The memoir is candid, offering insights into not only Rickson’s path to success, but also his failings (which, not unexpectedly given his single-minded obsession with Ju Jutsu and fitness, more often involved life as an impetuous youth, as a father, and as a person – generally – than it did his life on the mat.) The book also explores some of the fissures in the Gracie clan and how they grew under the pressure of the family’s mammoth success. With autobiographies, it’s always a challenge to know how true a picture one is getting, but Gracie’s willingness to self-critique makes this book feel truthful.

This book is fascinating and highly engaging. If you’re interested in martial arts, it’s a no-brainer for one’s reading list, but any reader who enjoys a memoir of a life intensely lived will find the book highly readable.

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BOOK REVIEW: The Coitus Chronicles by Olive Persimmon

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The Coitus Chronicles: My Quest for Sex, Love, and OrgasmsThe Coitus Chronicles: My Quest for Sex, Love, and Orgasms by Olive B. Persimmon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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In the midst of a five-year dry spell of sexlessness, Olive Persimmon decides not only to put an end to her inadvertent celibacy, but to turn her sex life around in a big and bold way. Besides a confessional of her varied adventures with boyfriends, ex’s, friends with benefits, and one-night stands gone awry, Persimmon describes a broader sexual education. Said education included workshops in bondage and domination as well as squirting (an eruptive glandular discharge that a small percentage of women experience naturally and that some others – apparently — go to workshops to learn to coax out.) Persimmon also learned one-on-one from an expert pickup artist as well as from a foot fetishist. She engaged in new-age sexual practices, including OMing (orgasmic meditation) and Western Neo-tantrism, and she even gave platonic cuddling a try (sexless cuddling between individuals who aren’t in an intimate relationship.)

Besides humorous and amusing sex stories, the book shines a light on the psychology that exists around sex and sexuality. The reader is granted access to both Persimmon’s therapy sessions and her internal monologue as she experiences these uncommon practices. Her pursuit of therapy resulted from a phobia about venereal diseases that was stifling her ability to have sex even with someone she trusted and while using protection. But what was more intriguing (not to mention being a source of much of the book’s humor) was the disconnect between how the reader is likely to see Persimmon, and how she sees herself. Many readers will feel that a person who would have an OM practitioner over to diddle her nethers, or who would hire a stranger to cuddle her, would be fearless and without boundaries. However, Persimmon presents herself as an endearingly awkward young woman, nervous and thinking that nervousness is apparent to all. In the process of presenting her adventures, Persimmon offers some insight into the differences between the way men and women see the world and how they communicate, and how those differences can cause tensions.

I found the book to be humorous and informative. I didn’t think that – by this point in my life — I was particularly unworldly or naïve, but there were a few things I learned about in this book that I hadn’t known existed [e.g. OMing and careers in cuddling.] With sexual subject matter (especially with such strange practices) there is plenty of room for humor, but it’s also nice to read books that challenge the generally uptight view of sex. I’d recommend the book for readers who read humor, memoirs, and who aren’t disturbed by discussion of sexual activity.

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BOOK REVIEW: The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby

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The Diving Bell And The ButterflyThe Diving Bell And The Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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If it had been written under ordinary circumstances, this would be a fine book. It offers some beautiful imagery and language, and – more importantly — is heartfelt, touching, and nakedly honest. But it wasn’t written under ordinary circumstances, which makes it an astounding book. Its author suffered a severe stroke that, after leaving him in a coma for a time, resulted in a condition called “Locked-In Syndrome,” which resulted in his inability to move any part of his body save his left eyelid. It was by moving this eyelid that he painstakingly dictated the book. As one might suspect, the book is concise and sparse in tone, but it read like that could have been a stylistic choice, rather than a necessity.

The title becomes less nebulous once you know it’s about a man with Locked-In Syndrome. The diving-bell represents his body, a clunky cumbersome entity that limited his perception to narrow slices of the world. The butterfly is his mind, which remained free to go anywhere and create anything he could imagine. Some of what I found most fascinating about the book was the author’s discussion of the mental world he created. Though the book deals even more extensively with how the condition changed his interaction with people. Loneliness is a central theme. Because of the severity of the condition, he is restricted to a special facility and can only see his children on weekends. While his children are the most important to him, he also reflects back to people that he worked with in his role as a magazine editor or who he counted as friends.

The organization is not strictly chronological, and I felt this was beneficial. By presenting flashbacks to before he was injured and, eventually, to when he had his stroke, he broke up the tragedy to keep it from becoming overwhelming.

I found the book to be extremely powerful. I would highly recommend it for all readers.

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BOOK REVIEW: A River in Darkness by Masaji Ishikawa

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A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North KoreaA River in Darkness: One Man’s Escape from North Korea by Masaji Ishikawa
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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This tragic memoir tells the story of a man of mixed Japanese – Korean heritage who was, as a boy, moved to North Korea under a “repatriation” program that was designed to provide North Korea with laborers while conveniently reducing a minority problem for the Japanese. During the Second World War, Japan had imported labor from Korea for the war effort. As it happens, Ishikawa’s father was from South Korea, but – in the wake of the Korean War — it was North Korea that was looking for rank-and-file laborers.

The author’s father was eager to get out of Japan because he was treated as minorities frequently are – especially ones as rough around the edges as he, and so he swallowed the propaganda of Kim Il Sung’s regime hook-line-and-sinker. The author’s mother (and the author, himself) didn’t want to leave Japan because she didn’t speak the language and was ethnically Japanese (putting her in the minority shoes.) Little could any of them have known how bad life in North Korea would be, and how dire a mistake it was to agree to the move.

Life in North Korea was hard on everybody (except the party elite), but it was particularly hard on this family because: a.) they were discriminated against and could only attain the lowest-of-the-low in farm sector jobs; b.) they were accustomed to life in Japan and so they knew exactly how backwards North Korea was compared to its neighbors; and, c.) the wife’s family in Japan disowned them, and so even when other transplanted families began to be able to receive wealth from their kin in Japan, their family was cut off (but assumed by neighbors to be receiving packages.) From constantly having to game the system to get enough calories to survive to a series of tragic events that were largely tied to the country’s impoverished nature (e.g. inadequate healthcare,) the book features one soul-wrenching turn of events after the next.

Ishikawa grew to manhood in North Korea, married twice, and had children, but when the famine struck in the 1990’s he fled the country into China across the Yalu River, leaving his family behind. The book’s last chapter deals with Ishikawa’s challenges living in an expensive first world country – Japan – while trying to get his family back. It’s difficult to know whether Ishikawa ever serious could have thought he could get his family out once he was gone. Certainly, he proposes that he did think that, and he spoke to Japanese diplomats (who felt horrible about what had come of people like him) about it. Still, it’s hard to imagine how he could have thought so, being familiar with how the Kim dynasty operated. Still, one may have to grant a man his delusions when he makes such a hard decision while he is literally starving to death. Ishikawa was able to discover what happened to at least some of his family members, and that information is in an epilogue.

I found this book gripping and fascinating. It’s depressing reading throughout, there’s no getting around that, but it gives insight into how people live in the villages of North Korea that is not so extensively described elsewhere – not to mention what it’s like to be a member of a minority group, labeled a “hostile” and essentially relegated to a low-caste life. I would highly recommend this book for all readers. It’s one the best books of 2018 that I’ve read this year.

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BOOK REVIEW: Going Solo by Roald Dahl

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Going SoloGoing Solo by Roald Dahl
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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This is the second installment of Roald Dahl’s autobiography, and it covers the period from the time when the famous children’s author left home to work Shell Oil in East Africa, through his adventures as a pilot in the Royal Air Force (RAF) during World War II, concluding with his return home to England. In short it covers the earliest years of his adulthood, before he wrote such classic books for children as: “BFG,” “Matilda,” and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”

In fifteen chapters, Dahl discusses his mysterious shipmate on the ship to Africa, a lion attack, an unwanted visitor in the form of a green mamba snake, and Dahl’s early experience of the war before he became a pilot. Becoming a pilot represents a shift in the book’s tone. From that point, it’s more of a war story, with the higher tempo of life and death situations that entails. That isn’t to say there’s no life and death in the first part, but it’s more quirky and humorous. In the chapters about his life as a pilot, Dahl describes crash landing in the desert and his subsequent recuperation, how he was posted to Greece where the German Air Force had a fleet of planes that made Britain’s look minuscule by comparison, and then his squadron’s move to Palestine to what would be his last battle-filled days before he was relieved from flight operations and sent home.

The stories throughout are as well crafted, as one might expect from a master storyteller. Dahl follows the advice (often-attributed to Elmore Leonard, but which has been around for decades in some words or another) to, “…leave out all the parts readers skip.” There is a tension throughout the book. It’s a much different approach than the previous volume, “Boy” which plays off the dramas of the adult-child interaction.

There are many graphics throughout the book, mostly black-and-white photos, but also maps and documents, but no other ancillary matter.

I’d highly recommend this book. If you want to know how to write a memoir that people will read, this is how it’s done. Dahl doesn’t try to take us from cradle to grave. He’s happy giving us the parts we won’t skip.

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BOOK REVIEW: Lab Girl by Hope Jahren

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Lab GirlLab Girl by Hope Jahren
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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This book is in part the autobiography of a female scientist with a career in a field that is both male-dominated and in which basic science is the meat and potatoes—by which I mean a discipline with few of the commercial applications at which companies, foundations, venture capitalists, and governments are willing to throw millions. Interspersed into the autobiographical chapters are short essays on trees and the ways they survive, grow, and interact with each other and their environments. So it’s a mix of biography and pop science, and was one of the most well-received science-themed books of last year (2016.)

The book is arranged into three parts. The first 11 chapters are entitled “Roots & Leaves” and these cover Jahren’s path to becoming a scientist from her childhood in an unexpressive Scandinavian family in rural Minnesota, through her college job in a hospital lab, and onto her graduate education. Part II consists of 12 chapters that cover Jahren’s years as a junior faculty member, most of which takes place at (my alma mater and former employer) Georgia Tech. The title of this chapter, “Wood & Knots,” gives one some indication of where the author’s story sits in this part of her life. She experiences both growth and set-backs during her time in Atlanta. The last part, “Flowers & Fruit,” describes the period in which not only her professional life, but also her personal life begins to bear fruit. During these years she moved her lab to Johns Hopkins, got tenure, built a family, and eventually moved to Hawaii to work for the University of Hawaii.

Besides Jahren, the only other major character in the book is her side-kick Bill, who was an undergraduate where she did her doctorate in California. The two met when Jahren was the Teaching Assistant for a course that Bill took, and subsequently he followed her from lab to lab as her research assistant. Bill’s mix of workaholic diligence, nerdiness, dysfunction, and adroit sarcasm made him a sort of soulmate of science. Their strange, platonic relationship is at the heart of the book, and is in part what keeps the reader wondering and turning pages. Her dog, her husband, and her child are all secondary characters by comparison (perhaps not in her life but in the science-centric story she is telling) though her son becomes a central player near the book’s end. The other people are cameos by grad students and other faculty members.

Jahren’s use of language is skillful and at times poetically beautiful. There’s a great deal of humor in the book, much of which stems from the dialogue between her and Bill. While the parts of the books about trees didn’t wow me as much as Wohlleben’s “The Hidden Life of Trees,” that may be because I read his book first and, therefore, was clued into some of the fascinating arboreal secrets. That said, these botanical sketches are intriguing and readable. The only place that the book bogged down for me was in incessant complaints about the difficulty of keeping a lab funded. (And this is from a person who was paid from grant money—job perpetually at risk–at the same Institute where Jahren struggled. But now I’ve lived in India for the past four years so… first world problems, right?)

I’d recommend this book for readers generally. I think it may be particularly insightful for young women choosing a career in science, but the book shouldn’t be shunted into a parochial box. There are a number of elements that will keep one reading. For some it will be a fascination with the unexpectedly complex life of trees. For some, the tension of this life story may have a lot to do with the mental health issues that Jahren struggles with. These issues aren’t put front and center in the book, but there are points at which their impact is felt. A few will just be wondering what exactly is going on with her relationship with Bill.

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BOOK REVIEW: Boy by Roald Dahl

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Boy: Tales of ChildhoodBoy: Tales of Childhood by Roald Dahl
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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This is the first of a two-volume autobiography of the writer of children’s books, Roald Dahl. You probably know of Dahl from his fictional works such as: “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “Matilda,” “The BFG,” “The Twits,” or “Fantastic Mr. Fox.”

I initially picked up the second part, “Going Solo,” which is about Dahl’s adult life–particularly his early post-school years in which he was an expat serving with Shell Corporation in Africa and—when the war broke out—a fighter pilot. I figured I should read the first part first because it’s short, readable, and might have bearing on his later life. I’m glad that I did, but not because it’s necessary to make sense of “Going Solo.” Rather, because this volume provides great insight into Dahl’s body of work.

Dahl was Norwegian, but spent his school years in Britain, attending boys’ schools and a boarding school. The English schools provided much inspiration for Dahl’s villains and fueled his adversarial view of the child-adult interaction—a view that serves writers of children’s literature well. While I suspect the teachers and administers were just strict and reserved as one might expect at a prestigious school in Britain, it’s easy to see how this lack of affection becomes villainy in the mind of a child. (Not to mention the upperclassmen, who too easily become like the kapos from Nazi concentration camps.)

One feels this child’s perspective throughout the book. The book is written for an audience of children, not so much in the language [which is approachable for young readers] as in the attitude. Dahl presents the world from a kid’s-eye view. He also makes occasional notes to emphasize to children the ways in which the world was changed. Travel and communication for today’s youth are completely different enterprises than they were in the interwar years.

Besides seeing how the teachers, administrators, and upperclassman provided Dahl with villains for books like “Matilda,” one also learns about the origins of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” Dahl and his classmates were given sampler boxes of prototype chocolates from Cadbury in exchange for a product review. This started Dahl thinking about laboratories and research facilities inside a chocolate factory, and a book and movie enterprise was born.

Quentin Blake, illustrator for most of Dahl’s books, provides numerous illustrations in the style of the other books. However, there are also many photos and notes from Dahl’s personal archives. The back of the edition that I have has a number of short ancillary features that are oriented toward kids.

I’d recommend this for anyone who is interested in Dahl’s life specifically, but also for anyone who’s interested in writing for children. I think writers can learn a lot from how Dahl presents his childhood in this book.

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