Review by Booklist Review
Ione, a writer and a psychotherapist, vibrantly and in telling detail describes what it was like to grow up in a household composed almost exclusively of accomplished black women at a time when few women of any color made successful lives for themselves. Her inspiration for this book was the diary of her great-grandmother, an ambitious, Reconstruction-era feminist, abolitionist, and writer who, by her own example, encouraged her daughters to pursue independent careers. Much of this biography focuses on Ione's colorful childhood memories of her spirited grandmother, a chorus-line dancer during the roaring 1920s and an unabashed gambler; her great-aunt, an elegant but prim and proper medical doctor and social reformer who was always at odds with her chorine sister's flamboyant life-style; and the author's oft-absent mother, a journalist and murder-mystery writer. The men in the family were equally prominent and accomplished and included a sociologist, a Reconstruction-era judge, an actor, and a lumber merchant-publisher. However, they are notably absent from Ione's account and, in fact, provided an incentive for her to write this biography as a way of discovering for herself a sense of family. Of special interest are the author's depictions of intraracial (black-on-black) prejudice. ~--Mary Banas
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In a moving, resonant self-portrait of growing up black and female in America, Ione focuses on the three very different women who raised her. Born in Washington, D.C., in 1937, her childhood and youth were divided between a breezy grandmother, a chorus-line dancer who ran a soul food restaurant catering to the racing set in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.; a dignified great-aunt, one of the first black women doctors in Washington; and a tough, tenacious mother who carved out a career as a journalist and writer of murder mysteries in New York City after divorcing her husband, a sociologist. Ione, a psychotherapist in upstate New York, writes of her two failed marriages--the first to a quasi-noble Frenchman, the second to ``a gay man living a heterosexual life''--which taught her hard lessons of motherhood. Her discovery of the diary of her great-grandmother, an abolitionist and feminist in 19th-century Boston, helped Ione unearth family secrets and finally achieve a sense of rootedness. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In this history of her remarkable family, Ione provides an insightful look at black culture. Ione's great-grandmother, Frances Anne Rollin, a free southern black woman in the 19th century, kept a diary which aided Ione in understanding her complex mother, her grandmother, a former vaudeville dancer who owned a popular restaurant in Saratoga Springs, and her great-aunt, one of the first black women doctors in Washington, D.C. In tracing four generations of African American women, Ione conjures up a world of of free mulattoes and privileged middle-class blacks in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in locales as diverse as South Carolina, Boston, Washington, D.C., Spain, and France. This book is slightly reminiscent of Dorothy Spruill Redford and Michael D'Orso's Somerset Homecoming ( LJ 10/1/88) in which Redford also searched for her family heritage, her roots. Both books belong in history collections.-- Angela Washington-Blair, Brookhaven Coll. Learning Resource Ctr., Farmers Branch, Tex. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Psychotherapist Ione's emotional family history focuses on the legacy of three generations of her African-American foremothers, exploring the roots of her own upbringing in a fragmented nuclear family. As a child, Ione, like her mother before her, was often deposited in the house of her great-aunt Sistone, one of the first black women doctors in Washington, D.C. But when Ione's grandmother, Be-Be, retired from her vaudeville career to establish a successful home-based soul-food restaurant in Saratoga Springs- -one whose patrons included Andy Warhol and New York State Governor Hugh Carey--Be-Be's house became Ione's new home--a happy event for Ione, but one arriving too late to placate her mother, whose smoldering resentment of Be-Be was mirrored in her often stormy relationship with Ione. Ione's struggle to understand this family strife began to resolve only when, as an adult, she learned that her paternal great-grandmother, Frances ``Frank'' Rollin Whipper, once married to a South Carolina judge, had in fact earlier been a renowned intellectual, activist, and biographer in Boston. Reading Frank's diary, Ione discovered that ``my great-grandmother was a woman who went to art galleries and quoted poetry.'' Although the diary ends with Frank's marriage, Ione, using public archives, continued to uncover Frank's life, finding in her grandmother the superwoman whose high achievements subsequent generations of women could never match. An unsparing, honest, and courageous family document. (Eight pages of b&w photographs--not seen.)
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review