Pushed Back to Strength: A Black Woman's Journey Home
by Gloria Wade-Gayles
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Description
The strong women and men of her youth taught Gloria Wade-Gayles invaluable lessons about race, faith, and dignity. In these richly spiritual and moving essays, she recalls their powerful legacy as she traces her steps from a southern housing project to a college professorship. With grace and humor she evokes the caring black community of her childhood in racially segregated Memphis. She writes of the close and sustaining bonds among the women of her family and of her painful and loving show more relationship with an uncle devastated by racism. She takes us from her spiritual grooming in the black church to her activism and imprisonments during the civil rights movement. Throughout the book, Wade-Gayles writes courageously about complex issues: her friendship with a white woman, her reasons for being pro-choice, and mourning her mother's death. She transforms even the universally traumatic experience of a bad haircut into an exploration of the politics of hairstyles and the meaning of gratitude. Passionate, lyrical, often playful, these memories remind us all how we can infuse the struggle for justice with warmth and love. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
generally good. a few parts were stupid--the haircut and the playing with kids. they came near the end. was she running out of material? i would have liked to hear more about her marriages and kids but she seemed most interested in her mother.
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Author Information
10+ Works 231 Members
Gloria Wade Gayles holds the Eminent Scholar's Endowed Chair at Spelman College and is a CASE Professor of Teaching Excellence for the state of Georgia. She is author of numerous books, including Pushed Back to Strength: A Black Woman's Journey Home and Rooted Against the Wind: Personal Essays, and editor of My Soul Is a Witness: African-American show more Women's Spirituality and Father Songs: Testimonies by African-American Sons and Daughters. She lives in Atlanta show less
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Pushed Back to Strength: A Black Woman's Journey Home
Classifications
- Genres
- Nonfiction, Biography & Memoir, History
- DDC/MDS
- 973.0496073 — History & geography History of North America United States United States Ethnic And National Groups Other Groups African Americans African Americans
- LCC
- F444 .M59 .N48 — Local History of the United States, Canada and Latin America United States local history Tennessee
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 66
- Popularity
- 472,694
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (4.00)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 2
