Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19515 in Books
• Published on: 2009-05-26
• Released on: 2009-05-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780312378554
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
Humorist and former model Wolff details her childhood growing up in an all-black Seattle neighborhood with a white father who wanted to be black in this amusing memoir. Wolff never quite fit in with the neighborhood kids, despite her father's urgings that she make friends with the sisters on the block. Her father was raised in a similar neighborhood and—after a brief stint as a hippie in Vermont—returned to Seattle and settled into life as a self-proclaimed black man. Wolff and her younger, more outgoing sister, Anora, are taught to embrace all things black, just like their father and his string of black girlfriends. Just as Wolff finds her footing in the local elementary school (after having mastered the art of capping: think yo mama jokes), her mother, recently divorced from her father and living as a Buddhist, decides to enroll Wolff in the Individual Progress Program, a school for gifted children. Once again, Wolff finds herself the outcast among the wealthy white kids who own horses and take lavish vacations. While Wolff is adept at balancing humorous memories with more poignant moments of a daughter trying to earn her father's admiration, the result is more a series of vignettes than a cohesive memoir. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Wil Haygood When I was growing up in the Bolivar Arms housing project in Columbus, Ohio, there was one white family among the 160 or so households. They lived just across the curved pavement from our apartment. There was a noticeable sway among the members of this white family, and perhaps it would have been so with any family thrust into an overwhelmingly minority role. It showed in their eagerness, even passion, to act black, to prove that they belonged in this environment. They listened to soul music and adopted speech adorned with black hipster dialect. The daughters dressed in outfits as outlandish as the clothing worn by my own "Soul Train"-loving sisters. It became hard, in time, to convince them that they were not black. It is that complicated human dynamic -- of being white in a black world -- that Mishna Wolff describes in her memoir "I'm Down," a tale of coming of age in south Seattle under the tutelage of John Wolff, her father. John hung around black people, had black girlfriends and married a black woman. "He strutted around with a short perm, a Cosby-esque sweater, gold chains, and a Kangol -- telling jokes like Redd Foxx, and giving advice like Jesse Jackson," Wolff writes. One admires any child who gets through a difficult childhood; the reading of such a chronicle, if told well, can be arresting. But, unfortunately, little of dramatic interest happens in the life of young Mishna. She misses no meals, suffers no trauma, feels no danger from any corner. Her parents divorce, but she gains acceptance into a white school, all the while continuing to live in her black neighborhood. There are petty little-girl-little-boy arguments. "I was a honky. I couldn't dance. I couldn't sing," Wolff writes, somehow believing this to be a portal into a childhood worth telling about. In her effort to explain what it was like living around blacks, Wolff too often comes close to mimicking a tired TV sitcom. Even though she writes, "I claim none of this as gospel. That being said, most of this stuff is totally true," long riffs of quoted dialogue beg suspicion and begin to grate. Wolff's tale comes alive only when she writes about her primping father or one of his love affairs with black women. Here is little Mishna taking a peek into her father's basement: "As I cracked open the door, I was immediately blinded by bright light. And when my eyes adjusted I saw that the floor of the 'office' was a forest of marijuana plants. Thirty or more marijuana plants in perfect rows with grow lights poised over them like it was time for their close-up. Whatever I thought of my dad's parenting abilities with us, he certainly knew how to daddy some weed." This is funny and far more insightful than what has come before it. And here is Mishna on her father taking her and her sister to the home of a girlfriend: "On Wednesday night Anora and I got ready for dinner at Dominique's house and Dad put us in our gold chains that we were allowed to wear only to church. We had started going to an all-black Baptist church after the divorce and Dad usually let our gold out of his desk only on Sunday because he said, 'If you wear gold every day, it loses its class.' " John Wolff comes off as a decent man, flawed for sure (he hides a .357 magnum in the house), but resilient. But what made him so desirous of living in a black world? And what did his black friends think of him? Mishna Wolff suffers, like many memoirists of late, from a reluctance to do some old-fashioned reporting to solidify her memory as she steps back into that tricky tunnel of time. Throughout "I'm Down," one keeps waiting for pop-culture references, for details of a child sensing a world rotating around her. But there is often little indication of what year we're in. Only John appears in living color. Mishna can hear her father before he sees her: "I knew immediately it was Dad. The blaring rhythms of Kool & the Gang came wafting up the block long before he did. And my classmates looked curiously at each other, wondering where the loud music could possibly be coming from. And then he came into sight behind the wheel of the car we referred to as 'the boat' crammed with all his buddies: Big Lyman, Delroy, Reggie Dee, and Eldridge." Wolff's story pales when it comes to her father. He's as "down" as they come.
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine
In this coming-of-age memoir, Wolff tackles an uncomfortable, even taboo subject: racial tension and a young white girl's attempt to assimilate into black culture. Most critics were greatly affected by Wolff's experiences -- many times hilarious and educational, but often quite sad. Wolff nonetheless maintains a light tone throughout as she details her childhood in rich dialogue and detail. A few reviewers commented that parts of her life read like a sitcom, albeit with little drama (or even trauma, the stuff of memoirs). Only the Washington Post diverged from other critics in its assessment that Wolff failed to explain her father's own interesting immersion in black culture. Most readers, however, will embrace both Wolff's and her father's stories.

Customer Reviews

Best Memoir I've Read Since "Liar's Club"
What a great book! Fun, moving, and with a really unexpected ending. Though the promo material highlights her childhood as a white girl in a black neighborhood, this memoir is a more sophisticated story--and more universal story -- of a child who can't find her place in her family. And the most moving aspect of this book is her success in finding a place in the world, and what it ultimately costs her. Yes, it's heartbreaking in places, but it's hysterical in others and most importantly -- the story is compelling. I literally couldn't put this book down and I have the circles under my eyes to prove it.

This semi-autobiograpical memoir is really great airplane food!
Wow, apart from a bird identification book, this is the very first amazon vine product that I might have purchased in 'real life' and I'm happy to say that this is definitely a worthwhile acquisition.
Before we begin let's establish what this book is not: It is not hilarious or tragic as a cover blurb indicates. It is also not, strictly speaking, truly autobiographical as the author declaims up front something to the effect that many of the things in the book might never have happened and that she uses composites of characters to represent distinct personalities in her story.
What this book is is a very charming, often poignant, quite incisive, well-told story based on the remembrances of a caucasian woman whose childhood was spent living in a deteriorating Seattle neighborhood with a father who chose to 'go black.'
Interestingly, it is also a real testimonial to the quality and effectiveness of the the Seattle public school system and civic organizations in their efforts to provide opportunities to its most promising albeit less privileged (read wealthy) chidren.
The story revolves around a white girl who, along with her younger sister remain in the custody of her ne'er do well father who has fashioned himself a black man in a white man's body. They live in an urban Seattle neighborhood which has become predominantly black; a change that the girls' father revels in.
The author does a wonderful job of describing the struggles and triumphs she experiences as she struggles with the multiple challenges of adolescence; parental divorce; racial comity, difference and divide; and familial and peer group strife.
A really great thing about the book is that the author is able to give insightful analysis of the dynamics of the unfolding tale as if she was fully cognizant of them as a little girl. Of course the picture only became clear to her later, in adulthood, which is undoubtedly why she makes her disclaimer about the events depicted in the book.
Ms. Wolff knows how to spin a story and once you begin this book I doubt that you will want to put it down until you have finished it.
I began reading it on a flight from the West Coast to the East coast and found the book to be the perfect length for this journey as I got through the first third on the first leg and finished up the rest just as we were making the approach to land on the second leg: Brilliant!
You will definitely become emotionally invested in this book and I recommend it as a very satisfying entertainment that is better than mere candy or a popcorn movie.

A very funny and entertaining look back at growing up in the 'urbs
I'm Down: A Memoir by Mishna Wolff is a very funny and heartwarming memoirs about growing up in the 'urbs during the early eighties. What I enjoyed about this book is that I can relate to some of the things in it. It's heart warming, funny and at times heavy. I highly recommend this book if
you want to read a realistic look on living in the a lower class diverse community.