The Dawn at My Back: Memoir of a Black Texas Upbringing

Rating:
Summary: A Daughter's Story
Review: I really enjoyed this book. The author wove together her personal experiences --the pain of growing up in a loveless yet nuturing home in Texas, and a type of everyman's history of the civil rights movement and the annonomous worker bees and vanguard her mother belonged too. She does this in an interesting and engaging way. She weaves her story of being born at the "wrong time" and coping with feelings of being an unwanted late life child which lead to an emotionally and physically abused childhood into the visual story and history of Blacks in media and film at the time Blacks created the protest movement(s) to erase injustice, and pyschological pain the african Americans experienced in America's south. Her story is a compelling one. Especially because it is so universally human. Her love hate relationship with her mother was the most poinant aspect of this book. She describes her response to the abuse of her mother yet she so admired, love, and comes to understand and forgive her finally.

There were some unanswered questions the reader might have , like what about her brother. What kind of relationship did they have? Was he too mistreated by her mother? Is she still married and what role did being married have on her relationship with her mother? but this is a story about a tragic and troubled and mother and daughter relationship.

IT IS A VERY INTERESTING READ for anyone interested in autobiography/civil rights movement and the media.

Rating:
Summary: POWERFUL ...like Angela's Ashes
Review: If you appreciated Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt for its presentation and viewpoint of growing up in poverty, you'll like this book for the same reasons--not on the subject of poverty but on race and understanding what it's like to grow up Black (& middle-class) in this country. It just tells, in a straightforward voice, the story of her life.

As a 10 year old, my mother had me read a book called "Black Like Me." It was a white man's experiment with wandering around in the world as a Black man. Carroll Parrott Blue's book is a better, more authentic version written by a Black woman who has lived the experience and is willing to talk about it.

I loved this book because from the first pages, with its pictures and its text, it lets the reader inside like an intimate friend--she shares what most Black people don't talk about. She lets you inside her experience. It's personal, yet it's nonfiction that reads like a novel. She shares her difficult personal relationship with her mother and her view of the world through popular culture that is familiar to all of us--but seen through Black eyes.

Rating:
Summary: Innovative Biography!!
Review: This is one of the most creative approaches to autobiography I've read in a long time. I enjoyed reading and studying it. The book is a highly visual autobiography---part prose, part poetry, part history and historical images. I particularly enjoyed how Ms. Blue revealed the nuances of an African American middle class mother-daughter relationship. Telling her story against the backdrop of the movies that were coming of age when she was growing up provided an enlightening perspective on the powerful influence of American movies on the human psyche. This book is a wonderful gem!