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“The posthumously published memoir of poet, musician, and activist Gil Scott-Heron is a body of bright stars that makes up a beautiful constellation — if one sees it in the right way. The individual stars are the disconnected observations and more or less extended anecdotes and episodes that comprise The Last Holiday. We learn of family members such as Aunt Sissy, who would trace her fingers along Gil’s spine as a boy while hugging him, stealthily checking for the scoliosis that afflicted some family members. We learn for the first time of his son, Rumal, of whom he never spoke publically or privately for 12 years, at the request of Rumal’s mother (whose identity the author does not reveal). And we learn a great deal about Gil’s friendship with Stevie Wonder in the early 1980s, particularly as Stevie made it his objective to establish a national holiday — the “last” holiday, to which the title refers — honoring the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.” Continue reading Emery Petchauer’s review of The Last Holiday at the Los Angeles Review of Books.

“The posthumously published memoir of poet, musician, and activist Gil Scott-Heron is a body of bright stars that makes up a beautiful constellation — if one sees it in the right way. The individual stars are the disconnected observations and more or less extended anecdotes and episodes that comprise The Last Holiday. We learn of family members such as Aunt Sissy, who would trace her fingers along Gil’s spine as a boy while hugging him, stealthily checking for the scoliosis that afflicted some family members. We learn for the first time of his son, Rumal, of whom he never spoke publically or privately for 12 years, at the request of Rumal’s mother (whose identity the author does not reveal). And we learn a great deal about Gil’s friendship with Stevie Wonder in the early 1980s, particularly as Stevie made it his objective to establish a national holiday — the “last” holiday, to which the title refers — honoring the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.”

Continue reading Emery Petchauer’s review of The Last Holiday at the Los Angeles Review of Books.

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