Unafraid of the Dark: A Memoir
- ISBN-10
- 0679425551
- ISBN-13
- 9780679425557
- Category
- Social Science / Ethnic Studies / American / African American & Black Studies
- Pages
- 282
- Language
- English
- Published
- 1998
- Publisher
- Random House
- Author
- Rosemary Bray McNatt
Description
In this stunning memoir, Rosemary Bray describes growing up poor in Chicago in the 1960s and becoming one of the first black women at Yale--and she shows why changes in the welfare system make it virtually impossible for her inspiring story to happen today.
"Certain things shape you, change you forever," Bray writes. "Years later, long after you think you've escaped, some ordinary experience flings you backward into memory. Being poor is like that. Living surrounded by fear and rage is like that. I grew up hating the cold, dreading the approach of night. Thirty years later, a too-cold room at night can trigger a flash of terror."
When Rosemary Bray's mother decides to apply for welfare, it creates a rift between her parents, and yet it proves to be the salvation of the family, enabling the Bray children to be educated--and education was the one thing her parents agreed upon as the only way to a better life. Bray writes movingly about her resourceful mother, who joins the Catholic church and shepherds the children to school. The nuns at the Catholic school spot Rosemary's potential and arrange for her to become one of the few black children at Parker, a predominantly white private school on the other side of Chicago. In a series of powerful vignettes, Bray describes the shock of discovering the discrepancies between her life and the lives of her affluent classmates. She writes of the experiences that gave her hope: a teacher fostering her development and choosing her to play the title role in Alice in Wonderland; the thrill of being accepted at Yale; falling in love; becoming a journalist; and, ultimately, becoming a mother.
In this beautiful memoir about how the dark in alife can be overcome, race, gender, and social problems are explored as a fine writer tells the story of a life.
Get the book
Other editions
Similar books
-
Race-ing Justice, En-gendering Power: Essays on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and the Construction of Social Reality
By Nell Irvin Painter, Homi K. Bhabha, Kimberlé CrenshawAs I wrote in a recent tribute to Justice Marshall: There appears to be a deliberate retrenchment by a majority of the current Supreme Court on many basic issues of human rights that Thurgood Marshall advocated and that the Warren and ...
-
Behind the Scenes. by Elizabeth Keckley. Or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House.
By Elizabeth KeckleyBehind the Scenes. by Elizabeth Keckley. Or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House.
-
The African-American Odyssey: To 1877
By Darlene Clark Hine, William C. Hine, Stanley HarroldSupreme Court Justices ( continued ) Name * Years on Court Appointing President John Marshall Harlan William J. Brennan , Jr. Charles E. Whittaker Potter Stewart Byron R. White Arthur J. Goldberg Abe Fortas Thurgood Marshall WARREN E.
-
Slavery, Race, and American History: Historical Conflict, Trends, and Method, 1866-1953
By John David SmithSee George D. Terry , “ A Study of the Impact of the French Revolution and the Insurrections in Saint - Domingue ... iiin , 65n , 66n ; John D. Duncan , “ Servitude and Slavery in Colonial South Carolina , 1670–1776 " ( Ph.D. diss .
-
Give Us Each Day: The Diary
By Alice Moore Dunbar-NelsonGive Us Each Day: The Diary
-
African American Firsts in Science & Technology
By Raymond B. Webster... George W. 318 Neal , Lonnie G. 126 , 312 Nickerson , William J. 11 Nokes , Clarence 121 Page , Lionel F. 356 ... Wanda Anne A. 150 Small , Isadore , III 135 Smart , Brinay 106 Smith , Jonathan S. , II 312 Smith , Morris Leslie 312 ...
-
Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass Three-volume Set
By Paul FinkelmanThe latter, Morgan argues, brought more autonomy to slaves and created conditions by which they could carve out an African ... Holton, Woody. Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, and Slaves and the Making of the American Revolution.
-
Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made
By Eugene D. Genovese... Eric Foner, Ella Laffey, John Laffey, Sidney W. Mintz, Brenda Meehan-Waters, Jesse T. Moore, Willie Lee Rose, John F. Szwed, Bennett H. Wall, Michael Wallace, John Waters, Jonathan Weiner, Peter H. Wood, and Harold D. Woodman.
-
The First to Speak: A Woman of Color Inside the White House
By Kristin Clark TaylorMy interaction with the Reagan staff was not close or constant , but I was always left with the tacit feeling that , using Vickers ' yellow highlighted check - off list as a gauge to measure political importance , most everyone on the ...
-
What the Slaves Ate: Recollections of African American Foods and Foodways from the Slave Narratives
By Herbert C. Covey, Dwight EisnachAccording to Phillips (1966), beef and mutton were not plentiful because of poor grazing pastures. ... Examples of references to beef from the narratives include Hattie Douglas (AR), who spoke of preparing an entire cow and preserving ...