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"...Thomas's confirmation ordeal remains a political rallying cry for a certain strain of ideological conservatives. The general public has nearly forgotten the details...but Thomas himself has forgotten nothing. Indeed, he cherishes the memories. They organize his universe. If he could have restrained himself from writing this unrestrained book, from revisiting with a vengeful relish all his private humiliations, more and more people might have given him the professional respect that Court watchers increasingly do. And his position in history would have been determined by his provocative judicial ideas rather than by his personal resentments. In a single gesture, however, Thomas has thrown all that away. The justice has written the most injudicious book imaginable. In his hunger for respect and dignity, he has exposed himself more dramatically than any confirmation hearing could have done. And in the process, he has done incalculable damage not only to his reputation, but also to the authority of the office that he occupies." Jeffrey Rosen, The New Republic (read the entire New Republic review)
Synopses & Reviews
Publisher Comments:
Provocative, inspiring, and unflinchingly honest, My Grandfather's Son is the story of one of America's most remarkable and controversial leaders, Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, told in his own words.
Thomas was born in rural Georgia on June 23, 1948, into a life marked by poverty and hunger. His parents divorced when Thomas was still a baby, and his father moved north to Philadelphia, leaving his young mother to raise him and his brother and sister on the ten dollars a week she earned as a maid. At age seven, Thomas and his six-year-old brother were sent to live with his mother's father, Myers Anderson, and her stepmother in their Savannah home. It was a move that would forever change Thomas's life.
His grandfather, whom he called "Daddy," was a black man with a strict work ethic, trying to raise a family in the years of Jim Crow. Thomas witnessed his grandparents' steadfastness despite injustices, their hopefulness despite bigotry, and their deep love for their country. His own quiet ambition would propel him to Holy Cross and Yale Law School, and eventually and — despite a bitter, highly contested public confirmation and — to the highest court in the land. In this candid and deeply moving memoir, a quintessential American tale of hardship and grit, Clarence Thomas recounts his astonishing journey for the first time, and pays homage to the man who made it possible.
Intimately and eloquently, Thomas speaks out, revealing the pieces of his life he holds dear, detailing the suffering and injustices he has overcome, including the acrimonious and polarizing Senate hearing involving a former aide, Anita Hill, and the depression and despair it created in his own life and the lives of those closest to him. My Grandfather's Son is the story of a determined man whose faith, courage, and perseverance inspired him to rise up against all odds and achieve his dreams.
Review:
"Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas frames the initial pages of his candid, often anguished memoir with an extended portrait of his grandfather. In doing so, the nation's most intensely scrutinized jurist has made what can only be called a judicious decision. Myers Anderson, who raised Thomas and his brother, was a fearless, hardworking man. He built his own house, acquired rental... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) property, operated a fuel-oil delivery service, plowed his own crops on his own land, and shot or slaughtered meat for his table. In Thomas' convincing portrait, his barely literate grandfather was as whip-smart and witty as Benjamin Franklin — if Franklin had been born poor and black in the Deep South. Among Myers' aphorisms on the benefits of hard work: 'Old Man Can't is Dead — I helped bury him' and my personal favorite: 'You worth less than a carload of dead men.' The book's charm decreases considerably when the author turns his attention to other lives and other matters, such as post-Jim Crow black professionals who worry that they may never measure up to their white counterparts. For some of us, a greater question is whether we will ever equal the black men who raised us after surviving far more harrowing circumstances. This question clearly haunts Thomas as well. Anderson kept his young charges out of trouble and hard at work, from sunup to sundown, from classroom to farmyard. Physical labor was performed without work gloves, which Anderson disdained as a sign of weakness. 'After a few weeks of constant work, the bloody blisters gave way to hard-earned calluses that protected us from pain,' Thomas recalls. 'Long after the fact, it occurred to me that this was a metaphor for life — blisters come before calluses, vulnerability before maturity.' Little about Justice Thomas suggests that he is immature, yet his vulnerability remains painfully apparent. If Anderson ever felt vulnerable, he no doubt kept it to himself and probably had little tolerance for such a notion. 'Despite the hardships he had faced, there was no bitterness or self-pity in his heart,' Thomas writes. Ironically, both those qualities are abundantly displayed in 'My Grandfather's Son.' Thomas seems unable to resist doing what conservatives have often accused African-American leaders of doing: casting himself as a victim. No tormentor goes unremembered here, from cruel African-American high-schoolers who teased him about his dark complexion to an arrogant white seminary classmate who assured him, 'One day you will be as good as us.' It brings to mind what Thomas once said about civil-rights leaders: 'bitch, bitch, bitch, moan and moan, whine and whine.' He goes on to trace his path from youthful admirer of the Black Power movement to card-carrying Republican. After leaving Immaculate Conception seminary and suffering a painful break with his grandfather, Thomas flirted with radicalism at Holy Cross. 'The fog of confusion lifted,' he writes. 'I knew what was wrong, who to blame for it, and what to do about it. I was an angry black man.' His use of the past tense belies the ire that rises like steam from so many of these pages. Yale Law School soon rekindled his anger at paternalistic liberals, 'ostensibly unprejudiced whites who pretended to side with black people while using them to further their own political and social ends.' In this and other comments, Thomas often implies that most blacks are witless simpletons at the mercy of white liberal duplicity. He is right to warn against African-Americans' over-reliance on Democrats and other putative liberals, but his descriptions of his own internecine battles with Reagan-administration stonewallers hardly point to a viable alternative. Those clashes convinced him that 'the disease of blind dogma afflicted both parties.' Left unsaid is any suggestion of how African-Americans should best address such predicaments. By the time he landed a job with John Danforth, then attorney general of Missouri, Thomas had grown 'more wary of unsupported generalizations and conspiracy theories,' but not so much that he could resist a generalization of his own: By 1975 he was beginning to 'feel that every discussion of race in America was fundamentally dishonest.' But in the chapters that follow, Thomas will go on to describe a scenario in which nearly every liberal group in America sets out to get him — a conspiracy theory, yes? To his credit, Thomas' call for honesty includes unflattering accounts of his personal struggles, including his failed first marriage, a drinking problem that he overcame, and a brief consideration of suicide. Despite his painful home life, Thomas continued to excel as an undersecretary at the Department of Education and chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In 1989 President George H.W. Bush nominated him to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals. His brief tenure there set the stage for the sordid drama to which Thomas is inescapably tied. In 1991, his nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court led to shocking testimony from Anita Hill, in which she accused her former boss of sexual harassment. Thomas' memorable denial was furious and eloquent, an instance in which his frustration, whether you believed him or not, seemed entirely conceivable — and his anger doesn't seem to have lessened much since. However, his evocation of a high-tech lynching, while clearly heartfelt, seemed inappropriate then and does so now. He writes that he must have been inspired by 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' a novel in which a black man goes on trial for raping a white woman. But Anita Hill's blackness complicates his discussions of racist myths about African-American men being untrustworthy around white women. He suggests that his upbringing taught him to never forget 'what it felt like to live in fear of the power of a mob,' but what white mob ever formed to avenge the alleged assault or harassment of a black woman? It's telling and dismaying that Thomas' consideration of the history of injustices against black men doesn't consider the denigration of black women that so often accompanied it. 'My Grandfather's Son' ends triumphantly as Thomas prepares for his first conference as a member of the Supreme Court. This memoir will not sway those who oppose his fierce, unapologetic conservatism, but it does provide a fascinating glimpse into a tortured, complex and often perplexing personality. Near the end of the book he discusses a desire to allow his life 'to be seen as the story of an ordinary person who, like most people, had worked out his problems step by unsure step.' In that he has succeeded. Jabari Asim is editor-in-chief of the Crisis magazine." Reviewed by Jabari Asim, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
(hide most of this review)
Synopsis:
Clarence Thomas was born in Pinpoint, Georgia to an early life marked by poverty and hunger. His father left the family when Thomas was just one, leaving their teenage mother to raise him and his younger brother on the $10 a week she earned working as a maid. But the hardship was just too much. After moving from rural Pinpoint to urban Savannah, Thomas's mother decided that it was best to have 7-year-old Thomas and his brother live with her father, Myers Anderson, and step-mother in their comfortable Savannah home. It was a move that would forever change Thomas's life.
His grandfather, whom he called "Daddy," was a fuel oil salesman with a strict work ethic, but he was also a black man trying to raise a family in Georgia in the 1950s and 1960s, when racism and oppression still flared. Thomas witnessed the struggles of his grandparents in the face of futility, their perseverance through accumulated injustices, their hopefulness in the face of bigotry, and their unrequited love for a country that seemed to reject them at every turn. And as Thomas himself grew up, rising from his humble, disadvantaged roots to attend Holy Cross and Yale Law School, he too faced discrimination along the way. He would overcome depression, heated political battles in Washington, and the most contested public confirmation to the Supreme Court in history. Clarence Thomas's story is a moving, heartfelt tale of one man's journey, against all odds, to the highest court in the land.
Synopsis:
Provocative, inspiring, and unflinchingly honest, this book relates the life story of one of Americas most remarkable and constroversial leaders--Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas--in his own words. 16-page photo insert.
Clarence Thomas is Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Born in Pinpoint, Georgia, he is a graduate of the College of the Holy Cross and Yale Law School. He lives with his wife and great nephew in northern Virginia.
jsiarlys, July 1, 2008 (view all comments by jsiarlys)
I read Clarence Thomas's autobiographical My Grandfather's Son some months after the first flush of publicity. The book is well worth reading, which is not to say that it won me over to Thomas's political views, or made me an admirer of his tenure in government. The early chapters provide a moving account of growing up impoverished in rural Georgia, subject to the pathological Jim Crow laws and customs of the time, which is as authentic as any other that has appeared in print. The book does establish that Thomas is a complex human being, a unique individual, as are we all. That is important. Nothing is more infuriating than being critiqued for something you are not, rather than for a life and a set of principles that one is proud of, even if others sharply disagree.
Thomas is absolutely correct that he has a right to be his own self, not to conform to any expected orthodoxy based on his race, his sex, or any other irrelevant characteristic. In this, he is merely living up to Jesse B. Semple's defiant statement to his employer ("my boss is a white man") who asks him "What does The Negro want now?" Simple responds, many times over, "I am not The Negro. I am this Negro. I represent my own self." (Taken from Langston Hughes's, Coffee Break. Thomas's rejection of a brand of so-called liberalism based on cheap stereotypes is a breath of fresh air. But his critique is missing a good deal of history, and his own account makes clear that, to those he adopted as his closest political allies, he was merely a convenient pawn, thrust into jobs he might indeed not have been well qualified to fill.
Thomas knew that most of the inner circle in the Reagan administration were uninterested in offering anything to advance civil rights. "By the end of my first year at the Department of Education, I took a dim view of the prospects for blacks in America. I no longer thought that the Reagan administration could do anything that would be of any help to them... Those of us who had chosen to work for President Reagan found it hard to shake the nagging feeling that this aides didn't trust us... Too many political appointees appeared to me to be too preoccupied with celebrating their own ideological credentials to pay attention to the needs of blacks. We hadn't voted for him, so why should they bother with us?" Ronald Reagan's plaintive phone call asking Thomas why African Americans considered him racist, and his protest that he personally had never been racist in his life, were no doubt sincere. But Reagan's administration, and his party, highlighted in Thomas's own words, provided the plain answer to the president's question.
Thomas relates that he was shocked by Coretta Scott King's dismissal of Ronald Reagan, "Well, he IS a Republican." What did the Republican Party mean in 1980 for African Americans? As early as 1960, the limited-federal-government wing of the northern and western Republican Party had been finding common ground with the states' rights Dixiecrats still embedded in the Democratic Party. Between 1964 and 1980, the Republican Party had made an open bid to all racists dissatisfied with Democratic sponsorship of civil rights laws and federal intervention to change parties. Thomas may not have noticed that, because by his own description, it occured during a time when he was less than interested in electoral politics. But it was bitter history to most African Americans who observed it.
Yes, there were Republicans who were instrumental in passing civil rights legislation. Considering the size of the southern Democratic bloc in congress, passage would have been impossible without those Republican votes. But, those Republicans were increasingly marginalized in their own party. There is no doubt that the Democratic Party took black votes for granted, had a very limited vision of what to offer black voters, and took their cue from an aging civil rights leadership, which could not fully recognize the changing needs of both "black" and "white" citizens in a nation transformed by their own earlier victories. When Thomas finds the liberal assumptions he encountered to be demeaning and patronizing, it is a point worth listening to. I know many African Americans who have never voted Republican, never been nominated to the Supreme Court, never even asked their opinion by the local mayor, who share many of the same concerns.
But reading between the lines, it is quite obvious that Thomas was himself being cynically used. I'm not talking about Senator Danforth of Missouri, who knew Thomas personally, hired him, stuck by him through thick and thin, sincerely believed in his abilities and sense of principle. I'm not even talking about Ronald Reagan, who appointed him to a position in the Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. I may be talking about George Herbert Walker Bush, a more cynical if more capable politician than Ronald Reagan -- but I can't tell from the slim public record. I am talking about the Republican Party establishment generally, those who ran the government for Reagan and Bush, many of whom came back for George W. Bush's disastrous Saturnalia.
It is obvious from Thomas's own account that his nomination to the United States Court of Appeals, and to the Supreme Court, were a cynical manipulation based on his race and his political loyalty, having nothing to do with his experience or ability. By his own standards, frequently and eloquently presented in his own book, he should have been insulted. When Thomas was first nominated to the Court of Appeals, it seems that everyone in Washington knew, except for Thomas himself, that the Bush administration was grooming him for nomination to the Supreme Court. He had never held a federal judicial position before, but for some reason he was the prime candidate the Bushies wanted to push, and they didn't even tell him about it. He found out when Senator Joseph Biden happened to mention it!
Thomas becomes almost petulant in complaining about the questions asked in formal confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee. "I was asked... I did not know..." If there was good cause to vote against confirmation, that was probably the appropriate reason to do so. He didn't know his material. The entire Anita Hill episode, whether her testimony was true, warped, a series of simple misunderstandings, or plain lies, certainly didn't rate the attention it got.
This reader does not find it credible that Thomas simply had no opinions about Roe v. Wade until after he was confirmed as a Supreme Court justice. I had an opinion about Roe v. Wade from the day the court's 7-2 decision was announced. I have never been to law school, never been a lawyer, certainly never served as a judge. I read about it in the New York Post. After reading the article, my opinion was, first trimester, the state has no authority to intervene, leave it up to the mother, third trimester, this is close to a fully formed baby that could survive outside the womb, the state may intervene to protect this new life as a distinct person, in between, honestly recognize that it is a grey zone, allow the state to regulate, but not absolutely prohibit. Very thoughtful and well balanced.
Many years later, I read the actual words of the court's opinion. I found it a well-reasoned, admirably conservative opinion, which rested on enduring constitutional principles, applied appropriately to a specific question. There are some matters The State has no business intervening in: the first trimester of pregnancy is one of them. Further, The State has no business compelling a pregnant woman to risk her own life, if her life is in danger, in order to deliver a baby. (Neither does The State have any business requiring a woman to have an abortion, no matter how socially compelling the argument that she should.) Why should I believe that while I, an unremarkable, well-informed, average citizen, have a firm opinion on Roe v. Wade, a federal appellate judge nominated to the Supreme Court had just never thought about it? Like Thomas, I have never had an abortion, and for the some reason. We're both male. Neither of us is ever going to be pregnant.
Thomas's subsequent written opinions show how poorly he understands the United States Constitution. His formal written analysis is that "a state may permit abortion, but it is not required to do so." That betrays a profound ignorance of The Federalist Papers, and poses the framework of constitutional law exactly backwards. All powers not expressly granted to the federal government, nor prohibited to the states, were reserved "to the states and to the people." The constitution does not "permit" the states to do anything. It may restrict the powers of state government, either because there is a pre-emptive federal authority, or because certain rights are reserved to "the people." The question is not whether a state must permit abortion, but whether and at what point in pregnancy a state may regulate or may prohibit the procedure.
Thomas's confirmation hearing for the Supreme Court was an unconstitutional travesty, which should have resulted in all participants, those who groomed and advanced him, and those who bitterly opposed him, being impeached and removed from office for violating their oath to preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States of America. They were ALL engaged in an unforgivable tug of war to "sway" the Supreme Court, and thereby to "sway" the fundamental law of the land, rather than allowing it to BE the fundamental law of the land, the unchanging bedrock upon which all other law must rest. It is true, as Justice Scalia has written, that the constitution means what it says, not what we think it ought to mean. If it has any enduring meaning at all, then there is little that should be changed by judicial nomination. Thomas's opponents were blinded by their own ideology to very good reasons to vote down his nomination. Thomas's advocates perpetrated a worse crime: they knew exactly what they were doing.
Clarence Thomas has made an interesting contribution to understanding America's continuing fixation with race, and the debate about how we put behind us, once and for all, the legacy that most of us wish had never happened. This reader comes away from My Grandfather's Son with the sense that Thomas has not come close to The Truth, but has deflated some hot air balloons that are getting us nowhere, contributed a few misunderstandings of his own, and opened some doors to find better ground for progress and reconciliation than either his friends or his harshest critics have been willing to lead us into.
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GALE, December 13, 2007 (view all comments by GALE)
I PURCHASED THE CD VERSION AND THE BOOK. MONEY WELL SPENT!! I PARTICULARLY ENJOYED THE CD VERSION BECAUSE IT IS HIS LIFE IN HIS OWN WORDS WHICH MAKES IT THAT MUCH MORE INTERESTING. PUT ASIDE ANY PRECONCEIVED IDEAS YOU MAY HAVE AND I PROMISE YOU THAT YOU WILL NOT ONLY ENJOY THIS BOOK IMMENSELY BUT WILL LEARN A GREAT DEAL FORM IT! THIS SHOULD BE A "MUST READ" FOR EVERYONE!
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"Review A Day"
by Jeffrey Rosen, The New Republic,
"...Thomas's confirmation ordeal remains a political rallying cry for a certain strain of ideological conservatives. The general public has nearly forgotten the details...but Thomas himself has forgotten nothing. Indeed, he cherishes the memories. They organize his universe. If he could have restrained himself from writing this unrestrained book, from revisiting with a vengeful relish all his private humiliations, more and more people might have given him the professional respect that Court watchers increasingly do. And his position in history would have been determined by his provocative judicial ideas rather than by his personal resentments. In a single gesture, however, Thomas has thrown all that away. The justice has written the most injudicious book imaginable. In his hunger for respect and dignity, he has exposed himself more dramatically than any confirmation hearing could have done. And in the process, he has done incalculable damage not only to his reputation, but also to the authority of the office that he occupies." (read the entire New Republic review)
"Synopsis"
by Harper Collins,
Clarence Thomas was born in Pinpoint, Georgia to an early life marked by poverty and hunger. His father left the family when Thomas was just one, leaving their teenage mother to raise him and his younger brother on the $10 a week she earned working as a maid. But the hardship was just too much. After moving from rural Pinpoint to urban Savannah, Thomas's mother decided that it was best to have 7-year-old Thomas and his brother live with her father, Myers Anderson, and step-mother in their comfortable Savannah home. It was a move that would forever change Thomas's life.
His grandfather, whom he called "Daddy," was a fuel oil salesman with a strict work ethic, but he was also a black man trying to raise a family in Georgia in the 1950s and 1960s, when racism and oppression still flared. Thomas witnessed the struggles of his grandparents in the face of futility, their perseverance through accumulated injustices, their hopefulness in the face of bigotry, and their unrequited love for a country that seemed to reject them at every turn. And as Thomas himself grew up, rising from his humble, disadvantaged roots to attend Holy Cross and Yale Law School, he too faced discrimination along the way. He would overcome depression, heated political battles in Washington, and the most contested public confirmation to the Supreme Court in history. Clarence Thomas's story is a moving, heartfelt tale of one man's journey, against all odds, to the highest court in the land.
"Synopsis"
by Libri,
Provocative, inspiring, and unflinchingly honest, this book relates the life story of one of Americas most remarkable and constroversial leaders--Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas--in his own words. 16-page photo insert.
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