Judith Matloff
Auteur de Home Girl: Building a Dream House on a Lawless Block
A propos de l'auteur
Judith Matloff teaches conflict reporting at Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism. She has pioneered safety training seminars for journalists, specifically women, helping hundreds of people feel confident to face an increasingly dangerous world. Her stories about war and violence have appeared afficher plus in numerous publications, including the New York Times Magazine, the Economist, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal. Matloff's work has been supported by the MacArthur Foundation, the Fulbright Scholar Program, the Logan Non-fiction Fellowship, and the Hoover Institution. She lives in New York City with her family. afficher moins
Œuvres de Judith Matloff
Étiqueté
Partage des connaissances
- Sexe
- female
- Nationalité
- USA
- Lieux de résidence
- Manhattan, New York, USA
- Études
- Harvard University (BA)
- Professions
- foreign correspondent
editor - Organisations
- Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma (Advisory Board Member)
Columbia Journalism Review (contributing editor) - Prix et distinctions
- Fulbright Fellowship
The Godsell
MacArthur Foundation grant - Courte biographie
- Judith Matloff was a foreign correspondent for 20 years, lastly as the bureau chief of The Christian Science Monitor in Moscow and Africa. Her stories have appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times, Newsweek and The Economist. She is the recipient of various awards, including a MacArthur Foundation grant, a Fulbright fellowship and the Godsell, The Monitor’s highest accolade for correspondence. Matloff teaches at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and is a contributing editor of the Columbia Journalism Review.
She still lives in West Harlem with her family and is at work on a new book.
http://www.judithmatloff.com/first.ht...
Membres
Critiques
Cette critique a été écrite dans le cadre des Critiques en avant-première de LibraryThing.I received this book as an early review copy and in the process of my own move, lost it. I could have faked a review and been done with it, and then continued to have access to the early review copies, but that is not how I work. I needed to read the book to write the review. Finally, the other day while cleaning out some stored boxes, I found it. Finally. Yay! I've been looking for it for years now.
Home Girl was mostly an enjoyable read. Matloff's writing has a decent flow and her prose is down to earth but the story itself has an odd unbalanced feel to it.
I've not traveled the world like she has, but I've been to Rio and Sao Paulo. I've lived in neighborhoods much like she wrote about in Home Girl with the local drug dealers working the corner across the street and colorful characters next door or down the block. I even had a character living next door that was much like the Salami in her book.
From both a sociology standpoint, and a nostalgic one, I loved her descriptions of the neighbors, the neighborhood and it's colorful denizens. But aspects of her story bother me. I felt that sometimes she wrote dispassionately and lacked any emotional connection, then further on would attempt to remedy it. That sort of shift felt very disjointed as if she added parts later to present herself as more compassionate. Unfortunately, I wasn't convinced. Those parts of the story felt very disingenuous to me. I begin to feel that she was obsessed with the house and didn't care much about anything else, and by the end, I didn't really like the author as much as I would have liked.
We don't always have to like the protagonist, but in a memoir, it helps if we're emotionally invested somehow. Matloff's journalism background served her well in writing a book that detailed the social shift in the culture of drugs and community gentrification and it's very possible that her journalistic objectivity was what kept her from being able to write in a way that fully engaged the reader. But ultimately, the book was very readable and did have great moments.
(I would like to add that this in no way means I think the author is unlikeable in any way. It just means that, by the end of the book, the sense of self Matloff conveyed was distant and I didn't feel any emotional connection to her at all.)
If you do read the book though here is Matloff's site with a video of her home and some of the faces from her book. http://www.judithmatloff.com/video.html
I think photos added would have helped ground the story. There might be photos in the later editions, I don't know. I have only the review copy.… (plus d'informations)
Home Girl was mostly an enjoyable read. Matloff's writing has a decent flow and her prose is down to earth but the story itself has an odd unbalanced feel to it.
I've not traveled the world like she has, but I've been to Rio and Sao Paulo. I've lived in neighborhoods much like she wrote about in Home Girl with the local drug dealers working the corner across the street and colorful characters next door or down the block. I even had a character living next door that was much like the Salami in her book.
From both a sociology standpoint, and a nostalgic one, I loved her descriptions of the neighbors, the neighborhood and it's colorful denizens. But aspects of her story bother me. I felt that sometimes she wrote dispassionately and lacked any emotional connection, then further on would attempt to remedy it. That sort of shift felt very disjointed as if she added parts later to present herself as more compassionate. Unfortunately, I wasn't convinced. Those parts of the story felt very disingenuous to me. I begin to feel that she was obsessed with the house and didn't care much about anything else, and by the end, I didn't really like the author as much as I would have liked.
We don't always have to like the protagonist, but in a memoir, it helps if we're emotionally invested somehow. Matloff's journalism background served her well in writing a book that detailed the social shift in the culture of drugs and community gentrification and it's very possible that her journalistic objectivity was what kept her from being able to write in a way that fully engaged the reader. But ultimately, the book was very readable and did have great moments.
(I would like to add that this in no way means I think the author is unlikeable in any way. It just means that, by the end of the book, the sense of self Matloff conveyed was distant and I didn't feel any emotional connection to her at all.)
If you do read the book though here is Matloff's site with a video of her home and some of the faces from her book. http://www.judithmatloff.com/video.html
I think photos added would have helped ground the story. There might be photos in the later editions, I don't know. I have only the review copy.… (plus d'informations)
2 
zimbeline | 62 autres critiques | May 17, 2011 |
zimbeline | 62 autres critiques | May 17, 2011 | Cette critique a été écrite dans le cadre des Critiques en avant-première de LibraryThing.A poignant, honest portrayal of a woman searching for home, Home Girl is an intriguing if sometimes wandering, snapshot of a ex-pat putting down roots. She doesn't candy-coat, and I think that is what keeps the majority of the memoir from becoming trite. A good read.
Cette critique a été écrite dans le cadre des Critiques en avant-première de LibraryThing.The one thing that bothered me the most about this book was that I really had no sense of her husband. She worried about his reaction to the house, but it was glossed over. Almost anything having to do with her husband was glossed over. It was interesting to read her take on the neighborhood activities and the inevitable gentrification.
Listes
Hobbies & Travel (1)
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Statistiques
- Œuvres
- 6
- Membres
- 231
- Popularité
- #97,643
- Évaluation
- 3.7
- Critiques
- 64
- ISBN
- 17
https://youtu.be/uFi_PKFTGVk
Enjoy!