Gayle Pemberton shares the accumulated revelations of a lifetime of observation in sixteen provocative autobiographical essays, interweaving her own history and that of her family with reflections on American literature, art, music, and film. Building on the tradition of such writers as W.E.B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, and Ralph Ellison, but with a wisdom and sharp wit uniquely her own, Pemberton moves from the integration of a transient hotel in Chicago to a party on that city's Gold Coast; from journeys by train and the memories they provoke to reflections on race aboard ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean; from the Mickey Mouse Club to the ghost of Emmett Till; from Harvard to Hollywood.
- ISBN10 0819563374
- ISBN13 9780819563378
- Publish Date 24 May 1998 (first published 7 May 1992)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Publisher University Press of New England
- Imprint Wesleyan University Press
- Format Paperback
- Pages 280
- Language English