Synopses & Reviews
A powerfully compelling, unsparing memoir from a widely admired African-American journalist.
Debra Dickerson's parents were share-croppers who migrated north after World War II. Born in 1959, Dickerson is an amalgam of her background--rural southern conservative and midwestern liberal--and at the same time a contemporary woman whose life has been shaped by the hardscrabble determination of her heritage.
In this book Dickerson bears brilliant witness to her rich, tumultuous life: the crippling self-doubt of her adolescence and her belief in education as a way out; her transformation in the U.S. Air Force into a distinguished intelligence officer; her years at Harvard Law School and metamorphosis into a "neurotic attorney with a Gold Card"; and, finally, her current position as a journalist in demand for her refreshing and controversially sane views on social issues.
With sharp intelligence and fierce wit, Dickerson shows us how she became what she is today--an iconoclastic American who transcends traditional notions of race and class.
Synopsis
The daughter of sharecroppers who fled the South, Dickerson, a widely admired African-American journalist, offers a powerfully compelling, unsparing memoir--a meditation on self, on family, and on society.
About the Author
Debra J. Dickerson is a Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation and a columnist for beliefnet.com. She has been an editor at U.S. News & World Report and her writings have appeared in The New Republic, The Nation, Slate, The Village Voice, and Essence, among other periodicals. She lives in Washington, D.C.