Imagine you gave a baby up for adoption forty years ago, and after years of trying to find her, she finds you. Now come the hard questions. She's healthy, beautiful, and successful, but she wants to know why you gave her away and why you didn't marry her father. And there is also the unspoken question of "What kind of black woman gives her baby away?" How do you explain to her that giving her away was the best gift you could offer? This is Sarah Weathersby's first published work, a coming-of-age-in-the-sixties-single-black-pregnant and on the way to Germany, memoir.
My Review - 3 1/2 More Sugar Please
I can describe this memoir in one word, Soulful, full of the down deep emotional feelings. You get a good feeling for Sarah Weathersby's personality, a strong genuine black woman. I felt like I was having tea with my long lost grandmother and was looking at her in awe.
It is my goal this year to read memoirs after falling in love with The Glass Castle. So memoirs and short stories are out of my comfort zone but when I read the review for this one over on Just One More Paragraph I knew I wanted to read it. I will say I wanted to read about the adoption and reuniting of them but the book was not, there were glimpses of that in some of the stories, so it wasn't what I expected but I still loved her voice and the stories. She wrote 'Writing this book helped me to purge the pain of those years. It was never intended to absolve my guilt or to transfer my guilt to anyone else. The writing was painful.' I laughed at loud at a part when she wrote "If you're reading this now, Edna, you can say, "AHA!" to funny. She had a warm hearted humour. Even with all the pain of those years, I am sure her daughter was able to forgive and both mom and daughter are proud of each other for what they have accomplished.
This memoir is written extremely well and Sarah Weathersby is a well traveled lady, she experienced 1st hand some very crucial historical moments, like Martin Luther King's assassination.
I think the author is brave to write a memoir like this. Giving a child up for adoption has to be such a painful decision.
ReplyDeleteSounds like an interesting book. I have three adopted granddaughters. They are three sisters.
ReplyDeleteI LOVE memoirs. This sounds like quite a good one!
ReplyDeleteI would imagine that writing the book would be very healing. It is a terrible decision that some many young women of the time had to make.
ReplyDeleteI've added it to my list as I plan to read more NF this year.
I have another recommendation for you (don't remember if I already did or not), now that you mentioned adoption. This is from the child's perspective, going through foster care etc.:
ReplyDeleteThree Little Words: A Memoir by Ashley Rhodes-Courter
Ha, I can't do short stories either. Way too short for me!
Great review. I've been in a memoir mood too.
ReplyDeleteThanks for stopping by and letting me know about your review. I'm glad you liked it! :)
ReplyDeleteThis book sure sounds amazing! I can imagine how hard it is to give a child away, and when that's the best gift the mother can give for her child, then it would have been doubly painful. I'll be looking this one up!
ReplyDeleteI just stumbled across this review. (Narcissurfing) Thank you for your comments.
ReplyDeleteSarah Weathersby