While very readable, this memoir strikes a false note for me. I keep thinking that I'd like to read the book she'll write ten years from now.

Her father was a narcissistic, self-centered, delusional, thoroughly ridiculous man. I suspect he really did love both of his daughters, to the best of his ability, and despite how he used them as sock puppets in his lifelong fantasy. But the neglect and the concomitant abuse, and the dry, humorous way Wolff recounts it seem irreconcilable to me.

One of the last events in her memoir, about swimming in the lake, she tells as if it were a bittersweet memory that ultimately shows their genuine love for each other. I can't buy it. Maybe something really does prove to Wolff that her father did his best, but I don't see it here.

I still recommend the book because it's well-written, and the cross-cultural dynamic is compelling. Ultimately, though, I find it unsatisfying. ( )

Book Overview

Mishna Wolff was born to white hippie parents in Vermont. However, when her family moves back to Seattle, her father drops the pretense of being "a white man" and becomes the "black man" he fancies himself to be. Having grown up in a predominantly black neighborhood during his childhood, Mishna's father immerses himself in the speech patterns, clothing and culture of his black friends. He expects his daughters to do the same. For Mishna's younger sister Anora, this wasn't a problem. However, Mishna has a hard time finding her place in the neighborhood hierarchy of kids. And when her parents divorce and her mom moves out, she finds herself struggling to fit in. Left largely to her own devices, Mishna must find her own way to survive.

When her dad enrolls the girls in summer camp, Mishna is out of her element and regularly terrorized by the other children. But her quick wit and smarts help her find a survival strategy that works for her: capping. Capping is the fine art of "yo mama" jokes where participants engage in trading escalating insults. Mishna excels at capping, and it is her lifeline in the hard-knock world of kid society.

I was becoming a machine—or at least I thought I was. All I know is I had purpose:

1. Me ruling.
2. You sucking.

I had aspirations. I had goals. I had a lot of friends, and a lot of bruises.

But just as Mishna begins to fit in at the neighborhood, her mom steps in and gets her transferred to a school for gifted children. Feeling she has found her place in the world at last, Mishna is excited—even thought attending the school means a long commute on city buses. Alas, although Mishna finds herself with children who have the same skin tone, she is still an outsider. Now she doesn't fit in because her family is poor. Her survival method of capping doesn't quite work at her new school, and she is forced to find another way to fit in. Eventually, she finds a small group of friends who bond over drawing and fantasy stories (think elves and wizards). But she finds an escape for her increasingly difficult home life at her friends' homes.

Sleepovers were like mini-vacations for me. I got to step out of my family responsibilities and into my friends' homes where I was catered to like a crippled person. Dad wasn't in the habit of asking if he could make me something to eat, or if I wanted him to rent me something while he was at the video store. In fact, the last time I'd had Zwena over, he got her to clean the kitchen after I made dinner.

Besides documenting her struggles to fit in to "kid society" in the neighborhood and at school, the book also chronicles her difficult and confusing relationship with her father, who she alternately loves and loathes. Mishna is torn between loyalty to her father and her wish to escape the lifestyle he inflicts on the family. He dates a series of successful and attractive black women, and each one seems like a potential lifeline to Mishna—an escape from the dirty, uncertain household her farther provides. Here is Mishna describing the visit to her father's new girlfriend's apartment:

And the whole place was covered in light cream carpet—which I tiptoed onto like it was hot lava. I knew that cream was for careful people, and no matter how Dad was acting, that wasn't us. We were the kind of people who needed dirt-colored things.

Eventually, her father remarries, and Mishna gains some new siblings. But, increasingly, her aspirations and dreams drive her to move in with her biological mother. In the end, Mishna is faced with a choice: staying with her sister and father in the life she is familiar with but never really fit or moving in with her mother and pursuing her dreams for the future.

My Thoughts

I'm a bit conflicted how I felt about this book. On one hand, parts of the book were very funny and Mishna's story is unique. I've not read a memoir with this point of view before. (Let's face it, memoirs with crazy, alcoholic mothers are a dime a dozen.) However, the book doesn't quite dig deep enough to find the pathos underneath the comedy. Although the book is written in a comic and almost breezy tone, much of Mishna's story is characterized by neglect and perhaps even abuse. She and her sister must often scrounge for food and can never count on having enough money for groceries. They are responsible for housecleaning and meal preparation. They are forced into uncomfortable situations time and time again. And although Mishna shares this information in the book, I don't think she truly faces head-on how difficult her father made her life.

I think part of the problem is that she hasn't come to terms with her father. In fact, I felt the end of the book left things very unresolved between the two of them. I needed to know more about how things ended up between them. Although her father was a constant presence in her life, his wants and needs always seem to come first and many of his choices are just downright inappropriate and selfish.

Perhaps Mishna Wolff wrote this book without having had enough time to be able to see her father through more mature eyes. She seems to skirt the pain, suffering and sadness that seem to constantly bubble below the surface of her entire childhood. Although I'm glad she was able to find comedy in her upbringing, I feel she owes it to the reader and herself to find the truth of her family life. Some of the best memoirists (I'm thinking of Mary Karr and Jeannette Walls) are able to recognize and write eloquently about both the comedy and the tragedy of their lives—thereby creating a piece of writing that fully describes and embraces the human condition. This memoir falls a bit short.

My Final Recommendation

Perhaps if Mishna Wolff had waited a few more years to write this book, she would have been able to create something with a little more meaning and pathos. As it is, this is an amusing memoir, but it lacks the insight and maturity to make it something more. If you are big fan of memoirs, this book isn't a bad read; it just lacks the insight that elevate the best memoirs to works of art or true statements on what it means to be human. ( )

This is one of those books that doesn't really go beyond its premise, which is okay. The author was raised in a poor, black neighborhood by a single white father who was convinced he was black and raised his children accordingly. It is funny, and the anecdotes are well-crafted and bring all the cringiness of being an awkward kid in the 80s into vivid focus. It's a very personal story, it never gets into any larger issues about race and class. The parenting is abysmal, overall the author downplays it as eccentric, so once again I'm in that maddening memoir-reading place where I can't stop wondering if she knows it was abuse but is taking a positive view because what else can you do after the fact, or if she truly sees it as merely quirky. ( )

Mishna Wolff's memoir I'm Down has all the ingredients for an awkwardly hilarious coming-of-age story. Mishna grew up in the early eighties as a poor white kid in a poor black neighborhood with a white, ex-hippie father who truly believed he was black...and expected his kids to grow up as if they were black, too.

Mishna's story begins with a humorous snapshot of her life. We meet her dad, who spends most of his time playing dominoes with four old black men that are all apparently her "uncle." Her mom, unlike Dad, stayed in the hippie phase, and a divorce was soon inevitable. Mishna and her younger sister Anora live with their dad, John, whose method of child-rearing resembles throwing them out in the ocean so they learn to swim.

Mishna is a self-defined "honky." She can't sing, can't dance, she has no rhythm or soul or whatever quality her dad and "uncles" think a 6-year-old should possess. But Dad thinks that "your neighborhood is where you live," therefore Mishna should make friends with the neighborhood kids that you just know are going to put her through hell before accepting her.

She quickly learns that the only way for her to survive is as a tough smartass that isn't afraid to "cap" (termed as the social art of insult) even the toughest boys with "Your mom" jokes and the "...PSYCH!" tactic. Just as Mishna's made her place in the neighborhood, Mom drags her out of public school and puts her in an upscale "smart-kids" school where she's the only one that has ever experienced racial diversity. Suddenly viewed as the poor, stupid kid, Mishna has to find her place all over again in a new environment, much to the resentment of her father who seems to be viewing his daughter more as "the man" than his own child. On top of all this social awkwardness, home life is made even more difficult with Mishna's younger sister Anora, who seems to always be in their father's good graces—she has "soul" and possesses every quality Mishna seems to lack.

I'm Down begins with this scenario that just seems so ridiculous, it has to be side-splitting hilarious. But we quickly see a dark side to the story. Mishna's father quickly becomes a villian of sorts, as he seems to have no sense of compassion. He seems more concerned about how his kids will make him look in the eyes of his peers than their own well-being. And it takes Mishna a long time to realize that her home is a toxic environment. For a good portion of the book, she is constantly seeking her father's approval. She runs track and joins the swim team, and, most embarrassingly, joins an all-black girls basketball team that seems to resemble an Amazonian tribe. I shuddered a lot during this book as I remembered how terrible it felt to be out-of-place during middle and high school, and I never had it anywhere near as bad as Mishna.

Wolff's writing style contributed a lot to the story; she uses a voice that seems to say, "Look how ridiculous my life was. I'm just going to look back on it and laugh." And that makes it very easy and enjoyable for the reader. However, for me, the story kind of lost its charm about halfway in. It started out as a series of anecdotes, and it seemed to turn into more of a narrative. It ended with me wondering what happened after age 14.

One of the best parts of this book was being able to finish it and find out more about the author and her life growing up. It had such an offbeat premise that I was glad to see Mishna has grown into a successful writer, model, and actor-comedian. I recommend as a comedic look at a life fit for a sitcom. ( )

Mishna grew up in a poor black neighborhood in Seattle. Her parents divorced when she was young and she and her sister Anora were raised by her dad. Her mom left - she had to go find herself. But the weirdest thing about 2 girls being raised by a single, dad in the 'hood? Being white. "White, white, white, white, white, white, white, white. I think it's important to make this clear..." (1) And so begins one of the funniest, most heartbreaking, memoirs I've read in a long time.

I'm always skeptical of memoirs...but Mishna Wolff's story had me at hello.. .or was it when she said her dad "believed he a was a black man...It wasn't an identity crisis.." (1) Wolff tells the story of trying to fit in, and make friends and be cool. Learning how to "cap" on people (sassy putdowns) and deciding on her future: "Solid Gold Dancer, Capper, Anesthesiologist, Governor, Assasin". (32) She takes us throough her father's romances, usually with beautiful women and him trying to remodel the house, himself. Mostly leaving things undone. Meeting Zwena, who at 10 years old, was the "Julia Child of the food stamp set." (42) Zwena could cook up a mean fried, bologna sandwich. Ah...I remember those days...so much of what Mishna Wolff was describing reminded me of my childhood. I grew up in a poor, black neighborhood and she captured all the humor that helps you not only survive but thrive!

Once Mishna goes to IPP, she feels as if she doesn't fit in anywhere anymore. Always the outcast, the different one. Wolff tells us how she coped, what she did for attention, the tough decisions that seemed to be made for her... She worries herself into tension headaches trying to figure out what is going to happen to her the rest of her life...she was twelve at the time. Trying to find the security that she wasn't getting at home. Through it all, she just wanted her dad's acceptance, wanted him to think she was "down", too.

I loved this book. I put aside everything, I didn't even stop for dinner. I was mesmerized, completely and totally engrossed. Wolff's voice brought her story to life and I was right there, living my own version of trying to be down. It was painful towards the end but well worth the time. It left me with a Wow! It was truly awesome! I could read it again right now! ( )