Book Description
When I Was White is the mesmerizing story of a black woman born to white parents during the most unforgiving years of official racism in South Africa. Sandra Laing was officially registered and raised as a white child. But when she was sent to a conservative boarding school, she was mercilessly persecuted because of her dark skin and frizzy hair-the results, her parents said, of a genetic throwback. In 1966, when Sandra was ten, the police removed her from school and she was reclassified as 'colored.' In a bitter court battle followed closely by the press, Sandra's parents fought, and lost. Then, as a teenager, Sandra eloped with a black man, and her parents disowned her. She struggled with poverty, illness, and the injustice of race laws. With the end of apartheid in 1994, Sandra vowed to find her mother. Her long, troubling search and their ultimate reunion forms the book's surprising and deeply moving conclusion. Drawing on a wealth of research, including extensive interviews with Sandra Laing, her family and friends, as well as access to previously sealed government files, Judith Stone has written a close-up, compelling account of a remarkable woman whose life stands as a tribute to the extraordinary resilience of the human spirit.
Customer Reviews:
A Translated Life.......2007-09-24
I want to commend Judith Stone for the phenomenal work she has done in discussing a number of difficult subjects: Sandra Laing herself, the history of South Africa, and the nature of memory, family, and the examined life. Clearly, Sandra's lack (repression) of memory, and her inability to articulate her feelings, left Stone with an enormous challenge. She works through this brilliantly by marshaling the journalistic reports from the time and later, interviewing people who know Sandra, and sensitively explaining and exploring Apartheid's tortured history. Stone uses her knowledge of studies of PTSD, false-memory syndrome, and other relevant fields in psychology to examine Sandra's individual and South Africa's collective forgetfulness/refusal to admit reality. All in all, Stone has done a stunningly professional and sensitive job in illuminating one person's life, the cruel and terrible absurdities of Apartheid South Africa, and, more broadly still, what it means to live in a world where an ideological rigidity based on lies and hypocrisy sucks the life out of everyone--oppressor or oppressed.
An emotionally charged, highly recommended pick........2007-08-04
When Sandra Laing was born in 1955 to a pro-apartheid Afrikaner couple in South Africa she was registered as a white child - but upon entering a white boarding school, was persecuted by students and teachers because of her brown skin. Her parents believed an interracial union back in their family history was to blame, but neighbors thought Mrs. Laing had committed adultery with a black man and the entire family was shunned. She was reclassified as 'coloured', her parents fought the South African courts to reverse the determination, then as a teen Sandra eloped - with a black man - and her parents disowned her. WHEN SHE WAS WHITE: THE TRUE STORY OF A FAMILY DIVIDED BY RACE crosses back and forth along discrimination lines and is riveting. Impossible to put down, it will enhance any general-interest lending library and is an emotionally charged, highly recommended pick.
History Is So Interesting.......2007-08-01
Histry is so interesting. It is the tie to learning about how things use to be. This book is full of history and tells us how the African people were treated long ago. The sad thing is that even today these people are still treated very different. My nieces who are black and white are beautiful, but experience racism everyday. The book can be difficult reading in some parts because it is history. So be patient and enjoy it. I experienced many feelings while reading it. Makes me want to go talk to my 95 year old grandma and just listen to all her stories.
Sisters speak.......2007-06-04
With great anticipation, i began to read a riviting life story. However, i couldn't get through the first two chapters because of the dry manner in which the book was written. It was an extremely difficult read. I never finished the book. I was very disappointed.
A story of a mixed-race girl in Apartheid South Africa.......2007-05-30
Sandra Laing was born in the wrong place at the wrong time. South Africa was in the midst of apartheid, and the little girl didn't fit in to the country's strict classifications of white, black and Coloured. Instead she baffled family and neighbors in Eastern Transvaal by sprouting kinky hair that shaped her dark complexion, much to the dismay of her ethnically Dutch, Afrikaner parents. Judith Stone writes the history of this troubled girl, from her first encounters with racism all the way to her middle-aged life in the present day.
Sandra's parents tried to turn a blind eye to their daughter's physical differences, but the white boarding school she attended would do no such thing. Parents and faculty were outraged that an obviously non-white student was being admitted to their school and mingling with their fair-skinned children. Apartheid was about separation and segregation, and Sandra was getting in the way of their long-established system. Her mother was accused of sleeping with a black man, and her father had to constantly defend his paternity. Admitting to some "color-mixing" in their ancestry was not acceptable in such a polarized climate, even though this had gone on unspoken in South Africa for decades.
When Sandra was finally escorted off the grounds of her school, she had no idea what she did wrong. Her father was launching his own private campaign to keep her white; Sandra didn't see things in color yet, and her mom and dad were determined to keep it that way. But she did see that her parents treated her differently from her brothers, and she did notice the disgustful looks of those who had been in charge of her care. She knew that something about her was just not right. At the hands of government officials, Sandra's official race changed from white to Coloured to white again. She realized that she must take her fate into her own hands, creating an identity for herself that no one would be able to take away from her.
WHEN SHE WAS WHITE isn't a traditional biography. It chronicles not only the life of the protagonist but also the struggle of those who tried to bring her life into the public eye. In this way, the book is both a story and a study in psychoanalysis, in sociology and in consumer culture. Sandra was a willing but confused eyewitness to her own history, and half the struggle of chronicling it has been in getting the story straight. Sandra doesn't see herself as a hero or a representation of the ills of apartheid. All she sees is the pain that she feels she caused her family, and her only wish is for their forgiveness --- not recognizing that they are the ones who have a lot to be forgiven for.
This book does much to present the contradictions of apartheid to those outside of South Africa. It also paints a strong picture of the landscape and individuals who made the country what it was. The expanse of the Transvaal countryside sharply contrasts with the polarized societies who lived there, and it is as if it were a beautiful cake on top of a precarious tower that was threatening to come crashing down at any second. Sandra represented some of the flaws of that cake, and she was therefore shunned by those who wanted to keep things as they were.
WHEN SHE WAS WHITE is the print edition of the movie "Skin," which is scheduled to appear in 2008. It is a story in its own right, though, and shouldn't be left on the shelf in anticipation of the film. Judith Stone speaks of both the cruelty and the perceived justification of apartheid, and no one is presented as a simple-minded individual. Bigotry runs deep in South Africa's history, but the focus of this book is in healing the wounds from the past and embracing this new, free country, where government-regulated racial caste systems no longer exist.
--- Reviewed by Shannon Luders-Manuel
Average customer rating:
- A Book to Learn and Remember By
- He's done it again
- Courageously Honest Memoir
- Piedmont childhood
- Excellent memoir - a necessary read!
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Colored People: A Memoir
Henry Louis Gates Jr.
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ASIN: 067973919X
Release Date: 1995-04-11 |
Book Description
From an American Book Award-winning author comes a pungent and poignant masterpiece of recollection that ushers readers into a now-vanished "colored" world and extends and deepens our sense of African-American history, even as it entrances us with its bravura storytelling.
Customer Reviews:
A Book to Learn and Remember By.......2007-05-07
Colored People is a wonderful book. It has humor, sadness and illuminates a specific period of time. I liked how his family and town shaped his values and made him what he is today. We are using this book as a Common Reading and also a One Book, One Community Program with the small university town of Shepherdstown. The author is coming and will meet the students who will have all read the book. The topic of race and the civil rights movement are highlighted and will be the topic of many discussions. I highly recommend the book. You will enjoy reading it and if you learn from it, so much the better.
He's done it again.......2007-01-10
An informative, interesting look into the attitudes, situations, and resoucefulness of "Colored People". Henry Louis Gates Jr. is a gifted and sensitive leader of thought and expression of our day.
Courageously Honest Memoir.......2006-05-16
I place Colored People alongside Angela's Ashes as one of the best works of memoir in recent years. He doesn't moralize; he just tells the honest story. This is a story that, to my knowledge, has not been told elsewhere. It is a story about the freedom and comfort and the pain of a segregated commuinty, and the heartbreak that came with leaving some of that world behind. Most things are deeper and more complex than we like to think they are. Colored People brings that concept forward in a way that no other book has. The people whose expressed frustration with not being able to keep the characters straight are missing the point - this isn't a murder mystery and it doesn't make any difference. Buy it. Read it. Share it. I only wish I'd done so when it first came out.
Piedmont childhood.......2005-12-21
Gates fears that Piedmont, West Virginia will cease to exist. His father felt and instructed him that people of the same race should not cling to each other through habit or fear. The author rebels at the notion that he can't be part of other groups, too. Piedmont is in Mineral county. Piedmont as a whole seems to be graying. The town's identity was bound up by the existence of the Westvaco paper mill. Almost all the colored people in Piedmont worked at the paper mill. Until the 1970's the houses were rented from white landowners.
The civil rights era came late to Piedmont. The family watched Dr. King on the news. The author's father was jaundiced about the civil rights movement. His mother was courageous. She sent four brothers to college and was recognized on "The Big Pay-Off". Through his mother, Gates was part of the Coleman clan, a big deal in Piedmont. The Gateses lived in Cumberland. Brown v. Board of Education marked the author and his peers for life. Integration brought interesting cultural clashes.
Gates was marked out to excel from first grade. Gateses had been attending Howard for three generations and Harvard for two. The family, in the beginning, went to the Walden Methodist Church. Gates was afraid of the power of the Holiness Church and he avoided it. His mother became depressed with the change of life when the author was twelve and she was forty six. The mother became a pack rat after a childhood of scarcity. Gates began to cook dinner for the family and he joined the church in his anxiety. A childhood friend urged him to read Dickens and he became a fervid reader. He attended an Episcopal church camp in West Virginia, Peterkin, in 1965. He thought it was like stepping into a dream world. He read NOTES OF A NATIVE SON. For some of the older people in Piedmont integration was experienced as a loss. Gates went to Potomac State for one year and applied for a transfer. He was admitted to Yale.
This is a lovely portrait of a community and a people.
Excellent memoir - a necessary read!.......2005-11-07
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is an extraordinary scholar, particularly on African-American issues. He was born and raised in Piedmont, West Virginia during the time of early racial desegregation and, as a black man, was directly influenced by this dramatically historical period. Gates graduated summa cum laude from Yale University with a degree in history, then received a Ph.D. in English from Cambridge.
He has written for The New Yorker, The Village Voice, Time, The New Republic, and other prominent magazines. In addition to Colored People: A Memoir, Gates has authored and co-authored several books including Figures in Black: Works, Signs, and the "Racial" Self (1987), The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism (1988), and Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man (1997).
The preface to Colored People is a letter from Gates to his daughters, Maggie and Liza and, though the book is dedicated to his father Henry Louis Gates, Sr. and in memory of his mother Pauline Augusta Coleman Gates, the entire autobiography is written in conversational tone, as if Gates were recounting his stories not only to his daughters, but to their entire generation.
Gates' collection of memories describes the era, long since past (both for good and for bad) when blacks and whites were segregated, and the subsequent integration of these colors, and what it was like to live in that world, and be a part of it's evolution. The title Colored People is beautifully appropriate, not only for the shades of black America it represents, but for each and every one of us; black, white, red, yellow: none of us are see-through.
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. invites us to live with him in Piedmont, West Virginia, and experience life-black life-through his eyes. We walk through his town, invade his cultural rituals as a welcome guest, experience the love of family and community with him, and suffer the pain and frustration of segregation alongside him. I felt privileged to walk with Gates into segregated, comfortable, welcoming, "safe" black cultural spaces I could never enter otherwise: a black funeral, a black church, a black barbershop, a black family reunion. In contrast, I felt anger and pain at being judged, criticized, and belittled because of skin color.
Gates emphasizes to his readers, through his personal life experiences, the fact that color is only an outside condition that changes with the sunshine. He allows us to see that we are all human beings first, experiencing the same emotions, passions and ambitions as the man next to us, regardless of his color.
He doesn't discount white racism though, nor try to "Uncle Tom" it into something to be scoffed at as negligible. He allows us to know what West Virginia was like in the 1950's through the eyes of a young black man. We feel his warm acceptance when he falls for the affections of a white girl, and when he is recognized for superior intellect among his peers, many of whom are white. We share in the camaraderie he feels when he plays ball with his white friends. But then we are appalled when he is forced to leave the company of their table in a restaurant and stand at the counter, because of his skin color. We get angry because those same white friends don't stick up for him when he is forcibly thrown from a dance club, simply because he is black.
Through both the segregation and integration, Gates shares with us what he finds to be of greatest value in his life; that being the love of his family. His memoir is somewhat biographical in this sense, in that the lives of his maternal family, the Colemans, and his paternal family, the Gateses, are shared with us in detail. We learn how Henry Louis Gates, Jr. found the support and strength to become the intellectual force he is today. Through the lives of his family members, we see yet another generation of segregated black America. We learn what it is like to be "kept down" in a dead-end mill job, to be forced to drink from a separate water fountain, to be drawn into a box and dared to cross its lines.
Through the Colemans and the Gateses we experience the freedom of integration, but also the fear and uncertainty of leaving behind a safe and comfortable life we have come to accept, if not love. There is fear and discomfort in change, and we dread its revolution, even as we feel its excitement, through Gates' memories.
Gates' optimistic personality shines throughout his book. It's refreshing to me that, despite his formidable education and vast first-hand knowledge of racism, segregation and integration, his autobiography is not written in lofty, scholarly terminology, but in an easy, relaxed manner that informs, educates and leaves the reader with the impression of having enjoyed a talk with a good friend.
Colored People: A Memoir is a text which, in my opinion, should be a part of every student's university curriculum. Gates' underlying message, that freedom should never be taken for granted, is one that should be ingrained in every American citizen, regardless of color or creed. His personal memoirs, one West Virginia man's record of an era, offer a candid glimpse into the trails of integration few of us today, thankfully, will ever experience. This book is not to be missed by anyone who cares about history, about race, and about multicultural America as we now know it and how it came to be.
Rhonda Browning White
Average customer rating:
- Useful for HS coursework & for real life
- worth the read
- Johnson's Classic Novel of "Passing"
- Wonderfully woven plot that holds your interest
- Fantastic!
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The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (Dover Thrift Editions)
James Weldon Johnson
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ASIN: 048628512X |
Book Description
This remarkable novel documents the life of an American of mixed ethnicity who moves freely in society — from the rural South to the urban North and eventually, Europe. A revolutionary work which not only probes the psychological aspects of "passing for white" but also examines the American caste and class system.
Download Description
As soon as we landed, four of us went directly to a lodging-house in 27th Street, just west of Sixth Avenue. The house was run by a short, stout mulatto man, who was exceedingly talkative and inquisitive. In fifteen minutes he not only knew the history of the past life of each one of us, but had a clearer idea of what we intended to do in the future than we ourselves.
Customer Reviews:
Useful for HS coursework & for real life.......2007-06-30
Teaching this novel to 10th graders in Chicago has not been the easiest task but the storyline is the draw...that and my constant reminders that "This is the hardest book you will read all year...it's a book I read in college...If you can get through this book you can get through everything else we do this year!" And it's true...most students did well in the unit and the course which forces them to step outside their confort zone when looking and talking about the origins of race and racism. I use this in conjunction with RACE & MEMBERSHIP (by Facing History & Ourselves- collection of readings related to Eugenics Movement in USA) and with the film, "Imitation of Life" (the color version, not not the original black and white). Be mindful that it's high-end vocabulary as the author, like many Black writers of the day, sought to not only show that the main character wanted to impress those he came in contact with but that the author himself may have been trying to prove his own intelligence in writing the novel. James Weldon Johnson is best known for his song, "Lift Every Voice and Sing" - the Black National Anthem.
worth the read.......2007-01-17
I am taking a class on Harlem renaissance literature and this was the first book assigned. It is easy to read and an enlightening story, the background information provided was interesting as well.
Johnson's Classic Novel of "Passing".......2005-04-12
Many novels of the African-American experience in the United States use the theme of "passing". These novels generally involve a light-complexioned African-American who can "pass" for white. Among other things, novels based on a theme of "passing" allow the character and the author to comment upon black-white relationships in the United States from both sides -- from the black experience and from the white experience.
Both white and black authors have made extensive use of the theme of "passing". The earliest novel involving "passing" of which I am aware is by William Dean Howells in his short 1891 book, "An Imperative Duty" which dealt with an inter-racial marriage. The African-American novelist Nella Larsen wrote a novel titled "Passing" set in the Harlem Renaissance. More recently, Philip Roth's novel "The Human Stain" involves the story of Professor Coleman Silk, a distinguished academic and student of the classics who passes for many years as white.
Coleman Silk is the successor to the protagonist of James Weldon Johnson's only novel, "The Autobiography of an ex-colored Man" written in 1912. The unnamed protagonist of the book is an individual, like Roth's character Coleman Silk, with great intellectual and artistic gifts who is torn between the opportunities open to him as an, apparently, white person and his strong sense of black identity. Like Coleman Silk and the characters in most novels involving the theme of "passing", Johnson's protagonist marries a white woman and lives a life plagued with guilt regarding his abandonment of his heritage as an African-American. Johnson's short novel is, to my mind, the best written on the theme of "passing", and it is a fine novel indeed. The book initially was published anonymously. The writing is so powerful and believable that many readers took the book for a true autobiography until Johnson acknowledged his authorship in 1914. Many years later, Johnson wrote his own autobiography, titled "Along This Way" in part to show that the story of his own life was not the story of the protagonist in the "Autobiography".
Johnson's story shows how his protagonist goes back and forth, both internally and in the outward events of life, about whether to make his way in the white or in the black world. He ultimately finds himself successful but unhappy. In addition to the story line of the book, Johnson uses the "passing" theme to allow many reflective passages by characters in the book on racial relationships in the United States early in the 20th Century. The most famous such scene occurs as the protagonist travels in a "smoking car" for whites on a train in the segregated South. He participates in a discussion among several white men of varied backgrounds on the "race question" as it was viewed at the time. There is also a chilling scene in the book involving a lynching, the burning alive of a black person. Johnson worked fervently in the latter years of his life to secure the passage of anti-lynching legislation in Congress.
But Johnson's novel includes a great deal more than a consideration of race issues. The book offers an outstanding picture of life in early twentieth Century America -- in the South and in Johnson's beloved New York City. The book is filled with pictures of dives and gambling dens and of the trade of cigar making in both South and North. It is filled with the love of the piano and of classical music. Most strikingly, the book has the spirit and feel of ragtime, which reached the height of its popularity during the years in which the book appeared. Johnson shows great appreciation for this product of American culture.
The book also illustrates some universal themes. The protagonist is troubled, specifically, by the conflict between his identity as an African-American and his wish to succeed as a white person. But the broader themes of the book are the consequences of lack of self-knowledge, the role of chance in human life, and the consequences of a certain sense of purposelessness and frustration, which plague many individuals separately from any consideration of race. Johnson develops these themes eloquently and ties them in well with his theme of "passing".
Johnson's novel is an important work of American fiction which deserves to be read.
Wonderfully woven plot that holds your interest.......2004-03-12
I absolutely loved reading this book, and would eagerly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn of Johnson's America through the eyes of a man caught between two worlds. The sometimes humorous passages and vivid details held my interest and fueled my imagination. I have countless sections of the book underlined in red.
Though written years ago, it is highly relevant to life in America today, and the self-effacing nature ('invisibility') of the narrator makes it even more intriguing as you follow what goes on in the class and race-defined society through his eyes.
A short but captivating (one of my favorite autobios) 'must-read'.
Fantastic!.......2001-10-01
James Weldon creates a story line of unimaginable magnitude! This complex book makes the reader almost sympathetic for a character who may not deserve it!
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The Colored Cadet at West Point: Autobiography of Lieutenant Henry Ossian Flipper, U. S. A., First Graduate of Color from the U. S. Military Academy (Blacks in the American West)
Henry Ossian Flipper
Manufacturer: Bison Books
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Black Frontiersman: The Memoirs of Henry O. Flipper : First Black Graduate of West Point
ASIN: 0803268904 |
Book Description
Henry Ossian Flipper was one of the nineteenth-century West’s most remarkable individuals. The first African American graduate of West Point, he served four years in the West as a cavalry officer but was court-martialed and dismissed from the service in 1882. He spent the rest of his long life attempting to clear his name.
Flipper’s record of accomplishment was significant for any individual in any time, and for a nineteenth-century black American it was phenomenal. As historian Quintard Taylor points out, in his post-Army career Flipper was a surveyor, cartographer, civil and mining engineer, interpreter, translator, historian, inventor, newspaper editor, special agent for the Justice Department, deputy U.S. mineral surveyor, aide to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, and consultant to the secretary of the interior. His work carried him to Mexico, Venezuela, and Spain, and he left a record of achievement that demonstrates his enormous talent and unrelenting effort.
The Colored Cadet at West Point contains Taylor’s biographical essay, Flipper’s account of his career at West Point, and a new index prepared for this volume.
Customer Reviews:
People & Portraits (Drawing in Color) by Lee Hammond.......2006-02-22
Excellent book - especially for those just learning the art form. An excellent adjunct to Ms. Hammond's books on drawing with graphite. Helps the beginning artist make the transition from grayscale to color.
Pretty medicore, sometimes awful.......2003-12-23
Ms. Hammond's pencil portrait book is not remarkable, but at least in that book she stuck to graphite -- not color.
This book shows a decided lack of colored pencil rendering technique. There are examples of awkward and somewhat untidy rendering coupled with mediocre drawing skills. This combination does not make for a good art instruction book.
Colored pencil can easily look messy and blotchy (or uneven) if rendered improperly. There were definitely some examples of that here. Also, one would assume that a portrait book would show, well, portraits that were well-drawn. Nope, not here. Some have misaligned features which are rendered with little sensitivity.
There also seems to be a lack of understanding about how to use color as well. Some of the shadows and dark colors are "overkill" and too harsh for the face.
However, to be fair, a few of the portraits were not bad. Some portraits used a deliberate "light touch" with a more limited color scheme (one portrait in particular springs to mind) and these looked better.
There was also little actual *drawing* instruction. Sorry, but just teaching the graph or grid method isn't going to hack it. That's just one tool used for drawing, and it very easily can become a crutch of that's all an artist knows how to do. What about drawing from life? How can someone use a graph or grid to draw from life?
I understand that the author is a very encouraging teacher and that's great. But my goodness! This certainly is not the best colored pencil book out there. A *much* better choice would by any colored pencil book by the fabulous Bet Borgeson. Now *that's* colored pencil done right.
Great book.......2000-10-29
i think that is a great book. it explains all the techniqes in detail. and shows you step byt step how to the drawing and coloring. Lee Hammond does great work and i love her books.
Customer Reviews:
It's fine for a rainy day reading.......2001-07-20
This is a nice story which can put you right on the couch next to him as you read. It's not all that unique a story though.
The Best Book I have Ever Read.......1999-03-09
I like this book because it is a non-fiction book written by a good person who lead an eventful life. I have met Mr. Taulbert when he came to my school in 1996. he was a nice man then and he probably is a nice man now. I also liked THE LAST TRAIN NORTH; the sequel to When We Were Colored. I also liked the movie that was made from this book Once Upon a Time When We Were Colored.
Book Description
Colored pencils offer aspiring artists a unique combination of creative versatility and precise control. This introductory course encompasses everything the budding and intermediate-level artist needs to get started right away: basic materials and tools; wet and dry techniques; the successful use of color, texture, and composition; the effect of perspective and depth on a drawing; maximizing a limited palette; and enhancing and burnishing colors. Sixteen skill-building projects and practical exercises are demonstrated through 150 color photographs, with detailed, expert instruction covering the four most commonly explored artists’ subjects: still life, landscape, people, and animals.
Customer Reviews:
The good with the bad.......2007-09-19
This is not really a book about "colored pencils," by which is usually meant Prismacolor wax pencils, or similar; it's a book about watercolor pencils, which are related, but not identical. Although some of the techniques are the same, the goals are different and the results, done well, aren't alike.
There is some good advice on technique here, but the example projects are uneven. Some of them are OK, some of them are quite nice, while others -- particularly the portraits -- well, not so much.
Finally, note that the topic of this book is not drawing per se, but painting or rendering: the author recommends in virtually every project that the reader start by tracing a source photograph.
Quite Helpful Book on Drawing with Colored Pencils.......2007-05-17
I picked up some good tips from reading this book. Now I'll tuck an emory board in with my pencils when I'm out drawing wild flowers, so I can sharpen the points of my pencils without having a pencil sharpener eat them up.
Even though I've read 3 or 4 books on using colored pencils, this helped me understand how to add burnishing with a white pencil and about shading and mixing colors. I have a better concept of using highlights, but still don't quite understand using perspective very well.
The main part of the book features sixteen demonstrations that show a finished drawing and the reference photo of the subject. Using eight steps, it shows the work in progress and gives instructions for achieving the finished drawing.
The topics covered in these demonstrations include four still lifes, four landscapes, four portraits and four animal drawings. This allows it to show a variety of techniques like monotone drawing, wax resist, and using layering to get the right strength of color. It gives tips for special effects for drawing fabric, fur, sand, etc. Using the pencils with water was explained and how to mix it with dry pencils.
The book ends with a gallery of eight inspiring drawings by top colored pencil artists.
I was quite pleased with this book.
Book Description
Northern whites in the post–World War II era began to support the principle of civil rights, so why did many of them continue to oppose racial integration in their communities? Challenging conventional wisdom about the growth, prosperity, and racial exclusivity of American suburbs, David M. P. Freund argues that previous attempts to answer this question have overlooked a change in the racial thinking of whites and the role of suburban politics in effecting this change. In Colored Property, he shows how federal intervention spurred a dramatic shift in the language and logic of residential exclusion—away from invocations of a mythical racial hierarchy and toward talk of markets, property, and citizenship.
Freund begins his exploration by tracing the emergence of a powerful public-private alliance that facilitated postwar suburban growth across the nation with federal programs that significantly favored whites. Then, showing how this national story played out in metropolitan Detroit, he visits zoning board and city council meetings, details the efforts of neighborhood “property improvement” associations, and reconstructs battles over race and housing to demonstrate how whites learned to view discrimination not as an act of racism but as a legitimate response to the needs of the market. Illuminating government’s powerful yet still-hidden role in the segregation of U.S. cities, Colored Property presents a dramatic new vision of metropolitan growth, segregation, and white identity in modern America.
Book Description
Zoe Wicomb's complex and deeply evocative fiction is among the most distinguished recent works of South African women's literature. It is also among the only works of fiction to explore the experience of "Coloured" citizens in apartheid-era South Africa, whose mixed heritage traps them, as Bharati Mukherjee wrote in the New York Times, "in the racial crucible of their country.
"Wicomb deserves a wide American audience, on a part with Nadine Gordimer and J.M.Coetzee." - Wall St. Journal
Wicomb is a gifted writer, and her compressed narratives work like brilliant splinters in the mind, suggesting a rich rhythm and shape."-Seattle Times
"[Wicomb's] prose is vigorous, textured, lyrical. . . . [She] is a sophisticated storyteller who combines the open-endedness of contemporary fiction with the force of autobiography and the simplicity of family stories."-Bharati Mukherjee, New York Times Book Review
For course use in: African literature, African studies, growing up female, world literature, women's studies
Zoe Wicomb was born in 1948 and raised in Namaquland, South Africa. After 20 years voluntary exile, she returned to South Africa in 1991 to teach at the University of the Western Cape. She currently lives in Glasgow and teaches at the University of Strathclyde, Scotland. Marcia Wright is professor of history at Columbia University and a member of the executive committee for the Women Writing Africa series. Carol Sicherman is professor emerita of English at Lehman College, CUNY.
Customer Reviews:
Wonderfully Subtle.......2006-05-09
Some of the linked stories in this collection were better than others. Freida is Colored in South Africa and becomes the (fat) girl who does well and goes to a private school and later to England. I loved the details - particularly the subtle, non-explaining ways in which Wicomb addresses Apartheid. (sometimes, though, I wanted a little bit of telling to explain some things and make them clearer)
In the final story, Freida is about to have a story collection published, which perhaps means that we can assume there is much autobiography here. Freida/Wicomb feels both shame and guilt and a reluctant love for who she is and where she comes from. And she so wonderfully shows, in the most subtle of ways, how hair is a major political issue for people of color.
A masterful writer.......2004-12-02
Wicomb is simply the most stunning writer I've come across in ages. Written and published during apartheid (1987), the book has a political history of its own. The beauty of this book, though, is that the art comes first and creates a poignant space for Wicomb's deftly-constructed discussions on South African race, class and gender politics. I've read and taught this book for two years and, with each read, it keeps getting better.
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- A Lifetime To Get Here: Diana Ross: The American Dreamgirl
- A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing, Ninth Edition
- A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing, Ninth Edition
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- A Woman Alone and Other Plays (Methuen Modern Plays)
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