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Lädt ... The Sweeter the Juice: A Family Memoir in Black and Whitevon Shirlee Taylor Haizlip
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Melde dich bei LibraryThing an um herauszufinden, ob du dieses Buch mögen würdest. Keine aktuelle Diskussion zu diesem Buch. I loved this book for the way it calmly revealed an African American family's dealing with the overwhelming racism of American society. The author's mother had been abandoned by her family in 1916 because she wasn't white enough to "pass" with the rest of the family. Hizlip tracks down the relatives, one by one, and provides pictures that vividly illustrate her research. Long before Black Power or African heritage pride took their place in the United States, Haizlip's family's solution was a common one, and the history she gives is fascinating. (Review by Nan, Bell, Librarian, Ithaca High School) Meticulously researched (with an excellent bibliography), intricate (the family tree is, at times, necessary to disentangle the relationships) and above all passionate, this book is easy to read. Its passion sometimes becomes anger and that conveys its own important message about the African-American experience. I found it both sad and ironic however that within the space of a few pages, Haizlip first affirms her belief in her father's story of an encounter with a ghost and then expresses her disbelief in a family tradition that a helpful (white) supervisor advised her uncle that he should move to another city and pass as white, because he'd never advance beyond the position of janitor while living as a coloured person. The kindness of a concerned white individual is more incredible than supernatural visitations. This is also something that white Americans need to know. Haizlip asks herself if she is also a racist, pondering her compulsion to enforce a sort of Jim Crow among her family pictures, with the white family separated from the black relatives. Speaking as a person who doesn't sort the family photos by skin colour, I'd say she probably is. But this book left me wondering where my own unsuspected racism may be found. keine Rezensionen | Rezension hinzufügen
Growing up in Connecticut in the 1940s and 1950s, the daughter of a prominent black Baptist minister, Shirlee Taylor Haizlip enjoyed a position of privilege and security in her identity that for many years she took for granted. For her mother, Margaret, and the rest of the Morris family, fair skin had been a double-edged legacy, a contrast to the Reverend Taylor's dark, proud, and successful clan. Light enough to "pass," Margaret's father and surviving siblings, descendants of an Irish immigrant and a mulatto slave, had disappeared into the white world, abandoning her and cutting themselves off from their tangled roots. Shirlee grew to adulthood moving easily between the black world and the white, but with an unfulfilled dream of discovering what had become of her mother's family. As Margaret approached eighty, her daughter determined to realize that dream. What she unearthed in dusty archives, letters, journals, and other records, is a tale of journeys - physical, emotional, racial, and social - that continues even today. Across the boundaries of race and time, the story spans six generations of both sides of Shirlee's family, ranging form Ireland, North Carolina, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., to Connecticut, New York, Ohio, the Virgin Islands, and finally California. There, with the help of a private detective, Shirlee tracked down her mother's only surviving sibling and reunited two sisters - one who called herself white and the other who called herself blackafter seventy-six years. She also uncovered a history of desertion, redemption, and betrayal set in motions by the charged, complicated meaning that color has carried in our society. The different choices the members of her multihued family made, and the different lives each of them led as a result, raise questions of identity and allegiance common to us all. Keine Bibliotheksbeschreibungen gefunden. |
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Google Books — Lädt ... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)929.2History and Geography Biography, genealogy, insignia Genealogy; Heraldry FamiliesKlassifikation der Library of Congress [LCC] (USA)BewertungDurchschnitt:
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Reviewed in November, 2007 ( )