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White is a state of mind : a memoir
Beals, Melba.
Adult Nonfiction LC214.23.L56 B47 1999
From Publishers' Weekly:
Beals picks up her memoir where Warriors Don't Cry, her recollections of the 1957 integration of Little Rock's Central High School, left off. Few would dispute Beals's courage in risking her life to participate in the forcible integration of the Arkansas public school system. But this volume falls short of the standard set by her previous book. It opens at the beginning of what was to be Beals's senior year at Central High, when normal adolescent tensions were exacerbated as civil rights workers, school board members and citizens struggled to bring down or to uphold the status quo. After word that white segregationists would pay $10,000 for the death of the Little Rock Nine ($5000 if they were kidnapped alive), Beals moved to Santa Rosa, Calif., to finish her education. She continued her studies at San Francisco State, where student activity resulted in the creation of a ground-breaking black studies program. Despite family and cultural pressure to "marry within her race," Beals married a young white man. But, apparently unable to cope with her independence, he deserted Beals and their five-year-old daughter, resurfacing a year later to file for divorce and sole custody of their child. Beals won custody, completed her studies and attended graduate school in journalism at Columbia University. Her story is both moving and instructive, but the prose is flat. At times, it seems as if Beals is attempting to describe her experience without allowing readers to know her true thoughts or emotions or the lessons she has learned from them. (Mar.) FYI: Warriors Don't Cry was awarded the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, and Beals has been nominated for the Congressional Medal of Honor for her role in the civil rights movement. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
From Library Journal:
Journalist Beals, one of the Little Rock Nine, continues her memoir of growing up African American in the age of segregation. In her first volume, Warriors Don't Cry (LJ 2/1/94), Beals described her experiences when she tried with eight others to integrate Central High in Little Rock, AR, in 1957. This volume takes Beals to Southern California, where she becomes a member of a white family, continues her education at San Francisco State, marries and divorces a white man, and bears a daughter. More than a coming-of-age story, the book tells of her struggles to find her own identity as an African American woman. She challenges our notions of finding a community and how we learn to "fit in." Historians may have trouble with the written dialog intermixed with Beals's own thoughts. Yet Beals draws you into her world and engages you in the issues that impacted on her daily existence. Highly recommended for all libraries.‘Jenny Presnell, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford, OH (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Beals, Melba.
Adult Nonfiction LC214.23.L56 B47 1999
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From Publishers' Weekly:
Beals picks up her memoir where Warriors Don't Cry, her recollections of the 1957 integration of Little Rock's Central High School, left off. Few would dispute Beals's courage in risking her life to participate in the forcible integration of the Arkansas public school system. But this volume falls short of the standard set by her previous book. It opens at the beginning of what was to be Beals's senior year at Central High, when normal adolescent tensions were exacerbated as civil rights workers, school board members and citizens struggled to bring down or to uphold the status quo. After word that white segregationists would pay $10,000 for the death of the Little Rock Nine ($5000 if they were kidnapped alive), Beals moved to Santa Rosa, Calif., to finish her education. She continued her studies at San Francisco State, where student activity resulted in the creation of a ground-breaking black studies program. Despite family and cultural pressure to "marry within her race," Beals married a young white man. But, apparently unable to cope with her independence, he deserted Beals and their five-year-old daughter, resurfacing a year later to file for divorce and sole custody of their child. Beals won custody, completed her studies and attended graduate school in journalism at Columbia University. Her story is both moving and instructive, but the prose is flat. At times, it seems as if Beals is attempting to describe her experience without allowing readers to know her true thoughts or emotions or the lessons she has learned from them. (Mar.) FYI: Warriors Don't Cry was awarded the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, and Beals has been nominated for the Congressional Medal of Honor for her role in the civil rights movement. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
From Library Journal:
Journalist Beals, one of the Little Rock Nine, continues her memoir of growing up African American in the age of segregation. In her first volume, Warriors Don't Cry (LJ 2/1/94), Beals described her experiences when she tried with eight others to integrate Central High in Little Rock, AR, in 1957. This volume takes Beals to Southern California, where she becomes a member of a white family, continues her education at San Francisco State, marries and divorces a white man, and bears a daughter. More than a coming-of-age story, the book tells of her struggles to find her own identity as an African American woman. She challenges our notions of finding a community and how we learn to "fit in." Historians may have trouble with the written dialog intermixed with Beals's own thoughts. Yet Beals draws you into her world and engages you in the issues that impacted on her daily existence. Highly recommended for all libraries.‘Jenny Presnell, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford, OH (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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