An impassioned, penetrating critique and inspiring model for progress.
A moving portrayal of the continuing plight of refugees.
Founding director of the nonprofit Fugees Family, an organization devoted to educational justice for refugee and immigrant children, Mufleh makes her book debut with an absorbing account of her journey from a Jordanian immigrant to an influential educational leader and activist. The author grew up in Amman, where, at the age of 17, “I was held at gunpoint and terrorized by a police officer who had found me kissing a woman in the park.” Although she describes herself as “a gay Muslim Arab American and refugee” as well as a middle-class, college-educated English speaker, her circumstances as an immigrant were far different from those of the ragtag group of boys that she encountered one day playing soccer in a parking lot in Atlanta. Impulsively joining them, she soon became coach of “the Fugees,” and in a few years, she had three teams and about 60 boys. As Mufleh became involved in the boys’ lives, she was stunned at the lack of support available to refugee families. They struggled economically and socially, and their children went to overcrowded, underfunded schools where their needs were not addressed. Besides offering vivid portraits of refugee families, the author engenders empathy in readers by asking them to imagine themselves in a frightening scenario: caught in violent conflict, fleeing with children, wrenched from home and community, and interred in a refugee camp, facing an inhumane immigration system “that assumes victims of war and atrocities are liars.” The rare few granted asylum would soon find that Blacks, the poor, and gay people “were othered and ostracized” and refugee kids left to languish. Seeing a dire need for remedial education for those kids, Mufleh started Fugees Academy in Atlanta, garnering nonprofit status from the IRS. Its success led to several more schools in other cities and well-earned acclaim for Mufleh. Nevertheless, she sees the schools as “the anomaly” in a system that needs profound change.
An impassioned, penetrating critique and inspiring model for progress.Pub Date: April 5, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-358-56972-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Mariner Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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