NOT SURE WHY it took me until 2023 to read this. It came out when I was in high school and became a classic almost instantly, but somehow, this was among my roads not taken, until this summer.
Easy to see why it became a classic, though. Partly in urban settings, partly in small town or rural ones, it blends pastoral scenes with some city grit. The voice and angle of vision are mainly youthful and fresh, but there is more than enough weighty material--sexual abuse, lynching. The narrative is briskly paced, the scenes memorable, the characters distinct and compelling.
Got me thinking--if I were to construct a reading list for a class in the great American autobiographies, what would we read?
Most of what I think of as the great American autobiographies I would not actually assign to an undergraduate class these days. I think Whittaker Chambers's Witness is in that category, for instance, but it's seven or eight hundred pages, and the story of becoming disenchanted with the Communist Party and then deciding to blow the whistle on people who stayed enchanted...I don't see that going over. The Education of Henry Adams? How many undergrads today are going to get behind the self-examination of an over-privileged, over-educated straight white male? Ulysses S. Grant's memoirs? Forget it. Benjamin Franklin? Nope.
You may as well just stick with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Malcolm X.
Is Jennifer Moxley's The Middle Room still in print? That might work.
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