Product Description

An astonishing coming-of-age memoir by a young woman who survived the foster care system to become an award-winning journalist

On a rainy night in November 1999, a shoeless Stacey Patton, promising student at NYU, approached her adoptive parents' house with a gun in her hand. She wanted to kill them. Or so she thought.

No one would ever imagine that the vibrant, smart, and attractive Stacey had a childhood from hell. After all, with God-fearing, house-proud, and hardworking adoptive parents, she appeared to beat the odds. But her mother was tyrannical, and her father turned a blind eye to the years of abuse his wife heaped on their love-starved little girl.

Now in her beautiful memoir, Stacey links her experience to the legacy of American slavery and successfully frames her understanding of why her good adoptive parents did terrible things to her by realizing they had terrible things done to them.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #400151 in Books
• Published on: 2008-09-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Patton, a graduate student at Rutgers, was a baby when she entered New Jersey's foster care system. Five years later, she was placed with a middle-class New Jersey couple eager to adopt. Myrtle and her husband, G, were both African-American, like Patton, but also deeply committed Pentecostals. While G was laid-back, Myrtle was a mean woman who believed she needed to beat and whip Patton to make her submissive, to prepare her for the modern realities of being a little black girl growing up in America. All the black children Patton knew got whipped whenever, wherever, and with whatever. This was part of our identity as black children. Patton believes this behavior came from the slave experience: It was what their parents knew and what their parents' parents knew. It was a behavior that had deep roots in the plantation legacy. Patton intercuts the story of Myrtle's abuse with vivid descriptions of the torture and beating of antebellum slaves. Unfortunately, G, helpless and emasculated... like many slave men, couldn't stop Myrtle's abuse. Eventually, Patton ran away, lived in youth shelters and won a scholarship to a good prep school. Patton's account is brutal and will likely become controversial, as her racial stereotypes, particularly her assertion that most black children are abused by their parents, may raise eyebrows. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
"For those of us who have lived through the war zone of family violence and the attempted denigration of the human spirit, Stacey Patton's That Mean Old Yesterday is a testament that you can reclaim your life and positively impact the lives of others. In her deeply moving and revealing memoir, Patton powerfully reminded me that there is always hope." -- Victor Rivas Rivers, actor, activist, and author of A Private Family Matter

Review
"[A]n unforgettable document of uniquely intelligent triumph." -- David Levering Lewis, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography

"Raw with pain, anger, and yearning, That Mean Old Yesterday also crackles with an abundance of intelligence, courage, and pure guts. Stacey Patton survived a childhood of abandonment and abuse and built herself into an accomplished, truly self-made young woman. Her memoir will grab you by the heart and blow your mind. A stunning literary debut." -- Jill Nelson, author of the bestselling memoir Volunteer Slavery and, most recently, Finding Martha's Vineyard: African Americans at Home on an Island

"Stacey Patton is a tour-de-force writer -- weaving together her many gifts as a natural storyteller as well as a steel-eyed historian, scholar, sage, poet, and journalist. In That Mean Old Yesterday, Patton performs a kind of sleight of hand by telling her own heartbreaking and triumphant story in context of the collective journey of African Americans -- out of slavery, through freedom, toward redemption. What makes this memoir even more universal and important is that in it we are movingly shown how it is possible to confront the past and why we must." -- Mim Eichler Rivas, coauthor of The Pursuit of Happyness with Chris Gardner and Quincy Troupe

"For those of us who have lived through the war zone of family violence and the attempted denigration of the human spirit, Stacey Patton's That Mean Old Yesterday is a testament that you can reclaim your life and positively impact the lives of others. In her deeply moving and revealing memoir, Patton powerfully reminded me that there is always hope." -- Victor Rivas Rivers, actor, activist, and author of A Private Family Matter

"Carefully reasoned and powerfully emotional." -- Kirkus Reviews

"A riveting tale...touching and instructive; the style penetrating and effective." -- Library Journal

"An astonishing coming-of-age story.... Patton's triumphant story will inspire African Americans to reconsider their treatment of children and their histories and be moved to better understand themselves." -- The Philadelphia Tribune

"That Mean Old Yesterday, Stacey Patton's feast of wonderful writing, is an extraordinary weave of memoir and racial history that transforms a black childhood and adolescence lived in hell into an unforgettable document of uniquely intelligent triumph." -- David Levering Lewis, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography

Customer Reviews

Patton's Journey Through Hell
That Mean Old Yesterday was an extremely interesting and engaging read. From the beginning I was drawn in, jaw dropped in disbelief and horror at the life she lived as a child. I have no experience with child abuse, and like she said the little bit I do know was from an article in the newspaper or on the internet, never anything as in depth and revealing as her life's story.

Coupling her story are alternating history chapters on slavery and racism that directly lead into each chapter about her. The connections lead well to helping the reader understand what she was going through. I am a little perplexed on how much emphasis was made on "white man" and slavery. Yes, this was a horrible time in the United States' history, and racism is a real and present hatred in some communities, but how can this be equated to encompass all of the "white man"? I'm her age, how can I be lumped up with everything she experienced and looked down upon because of this? Just the same for her in her situation. This was the one theme that was not present throughout, that we, in today's generation, have to deal with our ancestor's past, but we (today's generation and generations to come) should most certainly not be held responsible nor should we give in and blame how we or others act because of this or that. We are held accountable for what and who we are today, from what has happened in our lives, not everyone else's lives. Patton attempts to portray this message but always reverts to how white America has wronged her and the black race. Ultimately, of course, it isn't always a direct connection. She does correlate this past with how it affected the black family and how it resulted directly to the harsh treatment of how children are raised. But this isn't always clear.

Towards the end when she makes a statement of what if, it is a little unnerving. "...I had to learn their [white] literature, their ways, their humor and their ideologies - not necessarily to celebrate them but to absorb them and then use them to my advantage even if it was to turn it all against them one day, kind of like the spook who sat by the door." Patton has gone through a lot, has experienced a life of such traumatic events that you would not wish upon anyone, but she is a very intelligent woman and has learned from her past and utilized it more so than a majority of other people. I wish that some of what she learned would not be to "use against" the white man, but to use it mend the cultural difference, for it is only when this can happen that these societal problems can be cured.

I was very impressed with Patton's literary use of the interwoven historical chapters and how it expressed and illustrated her life as it progressed. Importantly, Part III, "Redemption", noticeably missed these chapters, which showed an important change in how Patton viewed this part of her life.

I deeply admire Patton for who she is and what she has been through. She is a courageous, intelligent, strong, outspoken woman full of élan. It is this type of person (not woman, or black woman, but person) that I would have loved to have had as one of my professors. Definitely recommend to read, if just to have yours opened to reality and a different perspective of a child's life.

4 stars.

An honest, sad, raw and inspirational read
That Mean Old Yesterday, by Stacey Patton, is a wonderfully written, if heart wrenching, memoir of growing up in New Jersey as a African American child given up for adoption and of the sad consequences of very poor oversight on the part of public agencies. Ms. Patton, however, doesn't write for pity - she writes with a passion and a journalist's eye. She also has a thesis that is marvelously woven in regarding slavery and its lasting imprints on the African American family, specifically with regard to corporal punishment. One needn't look past the jacket cover to see that the author obviously overcame adversity that is difficult to comprehend, however well written in That Mean Old Yesterday. Scars may fade but impressions don't. Obviously a talented writer and a very bright young woman, I am hopeful this is just the beginning. But it is her choice, quite obviously, about sharing such thoughts and emotions through her writing. I would very much like to see her expand on her ideas on slavery and its impact on African American culture. If nothing else, her poetry is wonderfully raw and emotional. So is That Mean Old Yesterday. A great book that should be getting more acclaim then it has thus far.

Phenomenal & Inspiring!
That Mean Old Yesterday is not just another book about child abuse, a difficult childhood, or a woman who has prevailed. It is a phenomenally written book about a remarkable woman; a woman who has defied odds and stereotypes. A woman who has achieved more in her 29 years than most people achieve in a lifetime...and she truly achieved everything with her will, determination, courage and stamina. Stacey Patton also encourages readers to look deeply into our past, our heritage, by entwining chapters of her life with chapters that deal with history: slavery, slave/master association and slave families. This book was difficult to read because of Patton's authentic and realistic accounts, but it was even more difficult to put down for the same reasons. This book will empower anyone who reads it. A must read for Book Discussion Groups! A must read for young adults...a MUST READ for all!