The Sweeter the Juice: A Family Memoir in Black and White

Rating:
Summary: An enthralling story of one American family
Review: Haizlip is a good detective, writer and storyteller. This is evident as she successfully tracks down the missing part of her family and writes a fascinating genealogical account. I learned of lot from this family's intriguing tale filled with issues of sadness, secrets, abandonment, racism, survival, separation, reunion and joy.

Fafa Demasio

Rating:
Summary: Very enjoyable, while still intense book....
Review: I enjoyed this book from cover to cover. Sure, some of it was confusing, like some said, but what part of genealogy isn't confusing? My own genealogy confuses ME! :o) This book was wonderful! I think the author did a wonderful job in addressing this little spoken of topic. I was recommended this book after I found out that my family had African American roots, & so this book hit home with me. It aided me through an emotional journey...answering many of the questions such as: "Why so many secrets?" It also helped me to understand that some of my family members will never in their lifetimes will willing to openly talk about this subject, but the book confirmed my feelings that it's their loss. Thanks & kudos to the author!!!

Rating:
Summary: Blood is Thicker Than Water.
Review: I really enjoyed reading "The Sweeter the Juice." Ms. Haizlip's story of her mother's family passing for white was fascinating and disturbing all at once. I could never imagaine denying myself and my own family in order to be accepted by the white world. I am glad that in the end that family came back together. And that her cousins that had no knowledge of their own Black ancestry were so accepting of it. Blood really is thicker than water....

Rating:
Summary: A Fine Literary Work
Review: I really liked the message of this book. The message of this book is that there is only one race: the human race, and that really we are all shades of the same color. THE SWEETER THE JUICE: A FAMILY MEMOIR IN BLACK AND WHITE is not just the story of Haizlip's family, but also American history. This book is well-written, educational, and a well-told story of the author's family. This is a story of laughter, tears, pain, joy triumphs, family, and an American history we all share. The story is about being true to oneself, and about recognizing family and acknowledging family even if that family did not always recognize and acknowledge you. For, some people always own up to their ancestors, but some people do not. Now that it's cool to have a black relative, some people are willing to recognize their black ancestors. Haizlip realizes this and other issues related to the state of being human. This book should be read by everyone everywhere.

Rating:
Summary: A Fine Literary Work
Review: I really liked the message of this book. The message of this book is that there is only one race: the human race, and that really we are all shades of the same color. THE SWEETER THE JUICE: A FAMILY MEMOIR IN BLACK AND WHITE is not just the story of Haizlip's family, but also American history. This book is well-written, educational, and a well-told story of the author's family. This is a story of laughter, tears, pain, joy triumphs, family, and an American history we all share. The story is about being true to oneself, and about recognizing family and acknowledging family even if that family did not always recognize and acknowledge you. For, some people always own up to their ancestors, but some people do not. Now that it's cool to have a black relative, some people are willing to recognize their black ancestors. Haizlip realizes this and other issues related to the state of being human. This book should be read by everyone everywhere.

Rating:
Summary: The Blacker the Berry
Review: Since I saw you on Oprah several years ago, I have been wanting to thank you for making this unparalleled contribution to our nation's history and literature. Books like yours will free us from racism, because they tell the truth despite generations of lies. I read Sweeter the Juice when I was in the 8th grade and it really shows me just how ridiculous this black-white-gray-beige thing is in our country. This book shows what a horrible society we are in when we force families to draw racial dividing lines on their love for their children and grandchildren. Your mother is an amazing human being to have endured so much rejection and loneliness as a child and then to put that all aside, and provide a loving home for you and your siblings.

Although the pictures of my faded brown ancestors look very much like your family's, I was raised in a family that has always acknowledged their African heritage. I have heard stories of distant uncles that have passed in order to ge! t jobs, but they returned to their black wives when they came home. This book shows me how fortunate I am that my grandparents didn't use the "benefit" of their blue, green, and hazel eyes to escape their true ethnicity. I have been raised in a family that has always taken great pride in being the first black people to accomplish something in their field of expertise. They enjoy the struggle, because it has always meant that with merely the power of their life, they have dismantled the system and created enough leverage for other blacks to persevere.

Your book is so great because it gets people to think of themselves and their ancestry in a more three dimensional way. It stops people from only claiming the ancestors that they most resemble. It makes people appreciate all of the million of lives that had to exist in order for them to simply be born. When I came from reading the book I didn't feel like I wanted to be color blind, but rather appreciative that I live! d and was a product of so many different cultures.

The p! art that I love is when you talk about how something like 95% ( I forgot the exact figure), of white Americans have black ancestry. That is one statistic I have been quoting ever since I read that page. And you should see how many of my white listeners seem to be praying they are apart of that remaining 5%. I rarely put this book down.

Thank you again for your years of research for this book. You have helped to enlighten countless individuals and families not to mention the nation.

Rating:
Summary: Lost Family
Review: The author, Shirlee Taylor Haizlip, is of mixed race parentage, her father more dark skinned black than her mother. Her mother, the youngest of her family, was abandoned by her brothers and sisters and her father, a mulatto, her mulato mother having died. Most of her surving relatives (those of Mrs. Haizlip's mother) moved away to other places and passed for white. The last child of the family, she was a painful reminder to them of the black experience they inherited. This abandonment happened around 1916. She passed into several gaurdianships and then ended up in the home of a light skinned couple, a dentist and lady who was slowly loosing her sanity. Her female gaurdian spent most of her time covering her furniture with white sheets,pulling down the blinds of the house and running around in rags. Her mother eventually met Julian, a part white and part Indian, a divorcee son of a prominent black minister. They married and Julian Jr. settled in as a pastor to the small black community in the working class town of Ansonia Connecticut.

In the pictures provided in the book, Margaret and her mother look rather Mediteranian. Margaret and Julian their three children, plus some foster children, lived an exceedingly happy middle class lifelife. There were summer homes to vacation, pleasant trips to Baptist national conventions, regular shopping trips, a vibrant social life, guests at home from NAACP leaders to Jackie Robinson. Racial problems were a little part of their life in this community. The children, except for the only sun Julian Jr. nicknamed "Brother," one of the few problems in their lives, were very successful in school,full of extra-curricular activities, camping, clubs, and so on.

Not exactly the life of the average black family in the 1940's. The author would marry a gentleman named Harold Haizlipp, attend Ivy league schools. They were amongst the elite of New York, sitting on a bunch of trustee boards, knowing all the famous intellectuals, and it was in such genteel circles that she and her husband conducted activism against racism. One interesting incident was a party thrown by the Haizlips in apparently the late 60's in New York. Attendees included Betty Shabaz, widow of Malcom X and a daughter of Nelson Rockefeller. A white woman, apparently some sort of civil rights worker, was brought along with one of Shirlee's friends. She apparently was so overcome by the interracial socilization going on, in addition to the nature of the party which called for guests to wear costumes revealing as much skin as possible (inspired by the play "Hairspray). The woman gripped around Harold's Cousin tightly and started screaming that the black males there wished to rape her before she was subdued and taken to a mental hospital.

Harold was commissioner of education in the Virgin Islands from 1971 to 1980. Shirlee had to fret about things like worrying about wearing the same dress as Queen Elizabeth when she met the latter. She became manager of the local CBS affiliate on the island and tried to make its programing reflect the interests of the natives. When she returned to the U.S., she became a director until 1986 at New York Public Television station WNET and had a few unpleasant racial situations there. She moved on to be the director of the National Center for Film and Video preservation at the American film institute and she found quickly found herself out of place in this organization which declared "Birth of a Nation" to be one of America's greatest film treasures. She didn't last long there. She expresses a great deal of disillusionment with race relations in this country.

The author towards the end of the book (set in the early 90's) helps her mother seek out her "white" relatives and there is mostly happy reunions. The interaction with Shirlee's Aunt Grace is particularly interesting. That lady was apparently quite sincere when she said she had no memory of her early life of things that related to the "black" part of her life. She had blocked it all out. Grace also is quoted bring up the issue more than once of her Spanish translator grandaughter going out with Hispanic men. She says "what's wrong with a good white man" and that her grandaughter's boyfriend is "dark--like a black man."

This book, except for the first part which is somewhat stiffly writen-- where the author laboriously describes, her ancestors, their physical features, their houses, personalities and so on--is a first rate piece of writing. The author has lived an exceedingly romantic life, one with lots of family love, friends and activity. ...

Rating:
Summary: It's time for America to recognize
Review: the multiracial/multicultural character of its people. Almost all African Americans and an overwhelming majority of White Americans have multiracial ancestry in their family trees.

Ms. Hazlip has done a magnificent job in covering articulating all of her and her family's racial/ethnic/cultural backgroud in her groundbreaking book. Since then, a lot of Americans are rediscovering their multiracial roots, with some even writing their stories for the public.

Note: I can't wait to read memoirs regarding Strom Thurmond's daughter. It's truly amazing!

Thanks, Ms. Hazlip, for sharing your story about you and your family.


Rating:
Summary: A book to remember
Review: The Sweeter the Juice made me realize that not all famlies are not perfect, especially when dealing with the issue of race. I read this book from cover to cover and then I read it again.
The author writes matter of factly about the history of her family whose color line spans black, white and in between. It is a book you shed no tears over even though you feel grief for a family parted by racial intolerence; rather you feel elated that the story is being told at all because such a history was often a hidden history.

Thumbs up to Shirlee Taylor Haizlip, she has written a real eye opener, especially with reference to the first US President George Washington. His uncle fathered a son by a slave woman who in turn became the founder of Shirlee Taylor Haizlip's maternal family. History is every colour under the sun, even the history of presidents.