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timelordmom's review against another edition
1.0
Just horrendous. I finished the book and am still waiting for the moment he stops being racist. It was a story about the racist things he did and how they were marginally better than the real racists. But it's okay because he has secrets he needs to hide and his dad sucks.
The writing was all over the place, as well. I'm glad to be done.
There are hundreds of better books that tackle the race issue. This doesn't need to be read by anyone.
For the love of all things holy, one of the last parts of the book is his fond memory of a plantation that once owned slaves.
I feel the author suffers from white savior complex.
The writing was all over the place, as well. I'm glad to be done.
There are hundreds of better books that tackle the race issue. This doesn't need to be read by anyone.
For the love of all things holy, one of the last parts of the book is his fond memory of a plantation that once owned slaves.
I feel the author suffers from white savior complex.
katemariea514's review against another edition
challenging
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
kathrynsbooks's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
This is a raw look at school integration in the 60’s from an insiders point of view. Grimsley digs deep into the rhetoric and structures in place in the south that create and sustain racism and racial bias as he tells the story of his experiences as a student attending public school as they went from segregated to school choice to desegregation/integration. I thought it was thoughtful and interesting.
evamadera1's review against another edition
informative
fast-paced
3.0
While Grimsley has beautiful prose, ultimately this memoir felt rather self-aggrandizing in large part because he spends a lot of time talking about how ingrained racism was in his upbringing but also how it never really affected him as much as others perhaps because of his queer identity. This book had lots of promise with a lack of payoff.
dustilane's review against another edition
3.0
This topic is so very important and I guess for such an important subject, I was disappointed with this book. It was okay. His writing style didn't really suit me and certain tendencies the author had quite frankly annoyed me.
mslaura's review against another edition
4.0
Memoirs have never been my go-t0 genre because they by nature offer such a narrow perspective, but I do love Jim Grimsley's writing and that alone elevated this one for me. Having lived all my life up north, it was interesting to gain some insight into what it was like to be growing up as a white child in the south during desegregation. I appreciated the author's honesty in writing about his thoughts and actions and how his understanding of race evolved.
heatherliz's review against another edition
3.0
I was a little confused by the premise. He started off saying that he was going to explain how he was taught to be a racist even though he was raised by “good people,” but then went on to describe how the people who raised him were clearly racist and not good people at all. Honestly I’d be surprised anyone would come out of a culture like this and not be racist.
zelma's review against another edition
2.0
The topic is important, interesting, and timely, but the writing style turned me completely off of this book. The idea fell short of the impact it should have had, solely with the way Grimsely told his story. He was so careful in making sure his readers knew that his memory was imperfect that half of the book felt like conjecture or mere possibilities. He relies on newspaper articles for events he can't remember, just after mentioning how unreliable the newspapers are. He also comments how certain conversations or events were likely, rather than remembering them outright; the entire books felt like he just said, "well, this might have happened."
However, my biggest issue was his use of short chapters to separate various anecdotes or themes. It felt like he wrote them out of order and then pieced the together thematically and chronologically. The result felt too piecemeal and was so repetitive I wondered if it was edited at all. Entire turns of phrase were repeated, sometimes more than once, and often in the very next chapter.
Grimsley has written his truth and I respect that. Unfortunately, he is so careful with his storytelling that it never reaches an emotional level for me; it was just kind of milquetoast. He tries to go for some shock in the last chapter with details of lynchings that seem out of place compared to the rest of the book. It was jarring and takes the reader out of Grimsley's story, without any return to the larger history.
However, my biggest issue was his use of short chapters to separate various anecdotes or themes. It felt like he wrote them out of order and then pieced the together thematically and chronologically. The result felt too piecemeal and was so repetitive I wondered if it was edited at all. Entire turns of phrase were repeated, sometimes more than once, and often in the very next chapter.
Grimsley has written his truth and I respect that. Unfortunately, he is so careful with his storytelling that it never reaches an emotional level for me; it was just kind of milquetoast. He tries to go for some shock in the last chapter with details of lynchings that seem out of place compared to the rest of the book. It was jarring and takes the reader out of Grimsley's story, without any return to the larger history.