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(as of Aug 31, 2024 02:01:21 UTC – Details)
A gorgeous, moving memoir of how one of America’s most innovative and respected journalists found his voice by coming to terms with a painful past
New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow mines the compelling poetry of the out-of-time African-American Louisiana town where he grew up — a place where slavery’s legacy felt astonishingly close, reverberating in the elders’ stories and in the near-constant wash of violence.
Blow’s attachment to his mother — a fiercely driven woman with five sons, brass knuckles in her glove box, a job plucking poultry at a nearby factory, a soon-to-be-ex husband, and a love of newspapers and learning — cannot protect him from secret abuse at the hands of an older cousin. It’s damage that triggers years of anger and searing self-questioning.
Finally, Blow escapes to a nearby state university, where he joins a black fraternity after a passage of brutal hazing, and then enters a world of racial and sexual privilege that feels like everything he’s ever needed and wanted, until he’s called upon, himself, to become the one perpetuating the shocking abuse.
A powerfully redemptive memoir that both fits the tradition of African-American storytelling from the South, and gives it an indelible new slant.
ASIN : B00HK3F4W4
Publisher : Harper Perennial; Reprint edition (September 23, 2014)
Publication date : September 23, 2014
Language : English
File size : 2030 KB
Text-to-Speech : Enabled
Screen Reader : Supported
Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
X-Ray : Enabled
Word Wise : Enabled
Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
Print length : 243 pages
Customers say
Customers find the self-examination insightful, worthwhile, and necessary. They describe the emotional content as deep, with funny hopeful moments. Readers describe the storyline as remarkable, emotional, and educational. They also praise the writing style as brilliant, honest, raw, and magnificent. Customers also find the emotional impact very moving. However, some feel the plot drags on and the story is climatic.
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