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In the country of women : a memoir
2019
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This memoir, written for her mixed-race daughters, is Straight's (Between Heaven and Here) effort to honor the women of her family, past and present. She traces the history of strong women in both her African American husband's family and her own European family, telling the stories from her perspective or as she heard them from other family members, using research to fill in the gaps. Straight's organization of the genealogy of these family members requires listeners to pay strict attention to who's who, but stories of the women are unforgettable. Donna Postel's narration elevates the storytelling about independent women in love and in anguish, in safety and in danger. VERDICT Recommended for fans of memoirs, family sagas, and stories of women.--Karen Perry, Old Dominion Univ, Norfolk, VA
Publishers Weekly Review
Novelist Straight (Between Heaven and Here) focuses on the lives of the women in her family in this moving memoir. The narrative is framed as a letter to Straight's three daughters-Gaila, Delphine, and Rosette-whom Straight shares with her ex-husband Dwayne Sims, and honors the daughters' rich ancestral past through stories of female relatives struggling to overcome violence, oppression, and hardship. Straight celebrates Jennie Stevenson, an aunt on the Sims side who, in the early 1900s, shot a man who cornered her, and Straight's mother, a Swiss immigrant who left home after her stepmother tried to marry her off at 15 to a pig farmer. The author excels in chapters about raising her kids, and about finding her place in the Sims clan (Straight is white, Sims is African-American). She feels indebted to her mother-in-law, Alberta Sims, who showed her how to keep family and friends close ("she took my hand and led me to the kitchen.... Alberta cooked for the whole community"). In the touching final chapter, Straight reflects on the enduring power of memory: "All we women have to give you is memory.... What we felt we might keep to ourselves, unless someone wrote it down." Straight passionately illuminates the hard journeys of women. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
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