Kamala Harris

BIBLIOGRAPHIC DETAILS
(Print: 8/4/2020; Penguin Books; 318 pages; 9780525560739.)
Audio: 1/8/2019; 9781984885746; Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group; Duration 9:30:18; (8 parts)


SUMMARY/EVALUATION:
You can read the “Reader’s Digest” version of this on Wikipedia. The entry there speaks to all of Kamala Harris’s achievements, but it’s nowhere near as articulate, feeling, and inspiring as this book. This audiobook is probably better than the print because you really need to hear Kamala speak her truths to get the sense of her strength, warmth and compassion that is supported on beams of steel.

AUTHOR & NARRATOR:
Kamala Harris (10/20/1964). According to Wikipedia, “is an American politician and attorney serving as the 49th vice president of the United States. She is the United States' first female vice president, the highest-ranking female official in U.S. history, and the first African American and first Asian American vice president.”

LOCATION
Alameda County, San Francisco, California, Washington DC

GENRE:
Autobiography, non-fiction

TIME:
1964-2018

SUBJECTS:
Autobiography; politics; non-fiction; politics; senator; California, San Francisco; LGBT; Obama-Care; Affordable Care Act; family; Foreign Affairs; Judiciary Committee duty; attorney general; district attorney; Mira Loma; intelligence committee; foreclosures; sociology; cancer; leadership.

SAMPLE QUOTATION:
From Chapter 1 “For the People”
"I’ll never forget the time my supervisor was working on a case involving a drug bust. The police had arrested a number of individuals in the raid, including an innocent bystander: a woman who had been at the wrong place at the wrong time and had been swept up in the dragnet. I hadn’t seen her. I didn’t know who she was or what she looked like. I didn’t have any connection to her, except for the report I was reviewing. But there was something about her that caught my attention.
It was late on a Friday afternoon, and most people had gone home for the weekend. In all likelihood, a judge wouldn’t see her until Monday. That meant she’d have to spend the weekend in jail.
Does she work weekends? Is she going to have to explain to her employer where she was? Is she going to get fired?
Even more important, I knew she had young children at home. Do they know she’s in jail? They must think she did something wrong. Who’s taking care of them right now? Is there even someone who can? Child Protective Services might get called. My God, she could lose her kids.
Everything was on the line for this woman: her family, her livelihood, her standing in the community, her dignity, her liberty. And yet she’d done nothing wrong.
I rushed to the clerk of the court and asked to have the case called that very day. I begged. I pleaded. If the judge could just return to the bench for five minutes, we could get her released. All I could think about was her family and her frightened children. Finally, as the minutes in the day wound down, the judge returned. I watched and listened as he reviewed her case, waiting for him to give the order. Then, with the pound of a gavel, just like that, she was free. She’d get to go home to her children in time for dinner. I never did get the chance to meet her, but I’ll never forget her.
It was a defining moment in my life. It was the crystallization of how, even on the margins of the criminal justice system, the stakes were extraordinarily high and intensely human. It was a realization that, even with the limited authority of an intern, people who cared could do justice. It was revelatory, a moment that proved how much it mattered to have compassionate people working as prosecutors. Years before I would be elected to run a major prosecutor’s office, this was one of the victories that mattered most. I knew she was going home.
And I knew the kind of work I wanted to do, and who I wanted to serve."

RATING:
I give this 5 stars. Kamala covers several subjects-discussing her trials, achievements, people, opinions, standards and goals—for herself and for the nation.
… (más)

This book was written in 2019 before Kamala Harris was tapped to be Joe Biden's running mate for the 2020 federal US election. But she was, obviously, thinking of that election because much of the book deals with what she sees as her accomplishments both as a prosecutor and as a senator. She did run for the Democratic presidential nominee race but withdrew and announced her support for Joe Biden. If she ever does ascend to the office of President, judging by this book, she would do an admirable job.

Throughout the book Harris mentions her mother, breast cancer researcher Shyamala Gopalan, as raising her to be strong, independent and principled. Kamala and her sister Maya were raised by their mother from the time Kamala started school because their mother and father separated. (Although she doesn't mention it in the book her mother took a position in Montreal when Kamala was twelve and she lived there until she graduated from high school in 1981.) After graduating with a law degree Harris took a position in the Alameda County District Attorney's office. Positions as Assistant District Attorney, DA, and California Attorney General gave her the opportunity to develop programs to curb recidivism,truancy and the death penalty. Coming to the AG's office in 2011 just after the 2010 subprime mortgage crisis, Harris devoted much time and effort to investigating and prosecuting banks for fraud, coercion and abuse. She was also a proponant of gay rights and campaigned against a proposition in California that restricted marriage to between people of opposite sexes. There were other meaningful initiatives taken under her leadership but she always credits the members of her teams for assistance. She ran for Senate from California in 2016 and won but tells how the celebration of that victory was diminished by Trump's win of the presidency. For the next four years she was quite the thorn in the side of the Trump administration. It is unfortunate that she was unable to stop the niminations of Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court but she certainly did her best. She also opposed other Trump nominations to high government roles. Now that she is Vice-President, the first female vice-president and the first African-American and Asian-American vice-president as well, she must have considerable influence on what appointments Joe Biden makes.

I hope I live to see the day that a woman becomes President of the United States. Maybe it will be Kamala Harris!… (más)