Review by Booklist Review
Some readers may recognize veteran news correspondent Goldie Taylor from her stints on NPR or her contributions to the Daily Beast. This searing memoir details her horrific childhood and examines her complicated relationships with her mother, grandmother, and the aunt who raised her. Taylor's father was murdered when she was five. At 11, she was raped by a neighborhood teen. Her mother told her never to speak of it, and no police report was filed. Abandoned by her mother at her Auntie Gerald's house, Taylor experienced physical, verbal, and emotional abuse. Raped by an older relative at age 14, Taylor became pregnant and suffered a miscarriage; again, she was told never to speak about it. All this takes place in a disintegrating 1980s St. Louis neighborhood beset by drugs, crime, and violence. Throughout, Taylor, who taught herself to read at age three, excels academically, wins awards, and finds consolation in the church. The book ends with 15-year-old Taylor reuniting with her mom and moving to a new house, ready to begin senior high. Taylor's narrative flows beautifully (even the parts that are hard to read) and integrates seamlessly with her reflections on love, care, and forgiveness. A beyond-compelling testimonial.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
A turbulent coming-of-age in the 1970s and '80s Missouri suburbs is recalled in this indelible memoir from Taylor (Paper Gods: A Novel of Money, Race, and Politics). After Taylor's father was murdered when she was five, the family moved to the all-white suburb of St. Ann. Taylor, who is Black, thrived in her new home until a teenage boy raped her when she was 11 years old. When Taylor's family ignored her trauma ("It was as if my mother tucked away the unpleasantness and moved on"), she struggled with thoughts of suicide. Later, Taylor went to live with her aunt and uncle in East St. Louis, where her aunt, who called her "Dum-Dum," forced her to toil for hours doing household labor, and her cousin repeatedly raped her, resulting in a pregnancy and a miscarriage. But school was a refuge for Taylor, and she became inspired by the works of Maya Angelou and James Baldwin, who "was a ready salve, meeting me at my point of need." Taylor's narrative is peppered with canny and insightful reflections: "For far too many years, I lived as if holding my breath." This powerful examination of survival and self-forgiveness is an emotional reckoning. Agent: Eve Attermann, WME. (Jan.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
When a book is compared to Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Tara Westover's Educated, it has to deliver. Political journalist/activist Taylor's (Paper Gods: A Novel of Money, Race, and Politics) memoir does just that, with its forthright prose and clear, insightful observations about experiencing and learning from trauma. The memoir reads almost like a novel, and each voice that emerges through the dialogue shimmers with complexity, making Taylor's memoir richly evocative, harrowing, and beautiful, despite the dark traumas and acts of violence the story exposes. The author's syntax explodes on the pages: short sentences make it impossible to look away from ruptures and pain, while longer passages suggest nuanced thoughts and complex feelings. VERDICT While the moments of racial and gender-based violence are difficult to read, the book ultimately promotes a sense of hope and healing, designed not just to tell the story but to show readers that every act of resistance, every movement toward change can have an impact, and that no impact is too small when it saves someone.--Emily Bowles
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Journalist and human rights activist Taylor serves up a sometimes brutal, sometimes tender coming-of-age story. In 1971, writes the author, her mother relocated their family from Chicago to East St. Louis, where, a few weeks later, her name "landed at the top of the waiting list for a new public housing project." There and elsewhere, horrors awaited: Taylor's older brother was beaten nearly to death, her father was killed, and she was raped--all terrible events the author relates with a certain matter-of-factness, as if as natural as a heat wave: "They'd found a man dead in his house, hunched over an air conditioner that was out of coolant and blowing hot air. The city morgue was at capacity, and they were running out of places to put all the bodies." Moving to a suburb hardly helped, though it was refreshing not to walk along rows of abandoned houses and dirty street corners. Her mother's one rule was not to embarrass her in front of the White neighbors, her attitude being that living among them was to be seen "not as an auger of imminent social change but rather an indication of our individual morality and earnestness." Moving back and forth between family members' households after attempting suicide, Taylor grew into a reader and excellent student. She was also unfailingly tough; in one case, she held her own in a fight with a taunting middle school classmate who "had fists like Leon Spinks." Though aspirational, Taylor doesn't buy the line that hard work always leads to success, not when "a stray bullet after a school dance could change everything." Still, her well-told story, born of tenacity and intelligence alike, ends in success of a hard-won kind--for, as she concludes, "Grief…is love with nowhere to go." An affecting memoir of overcoming adversity when every deck is stacked against you. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
