I`m Down (Hardcover)

White comedian Mishna Wolff relates her memorable childhood as the daughter of a man who went to great lengths to pretend he was black. In an effort to identify with African-American culture, Mishna`s father permed his hair, sported thick gold chains, and dated a steady stream of black women, but his daughter had a more difficult time adapting as a minority in her predominantly black school and neighborhood, where her pathetic attempts at dancing and Double-Dutch single her out for ridicule. Just when Mishna begins to gain some recess renown as a master of "capping" (cracking insults) on her schoolmates, her Buddhist mother enrolls her in a school for gifted children, where she faces a new form of discrimination because of the black behavioral traits she worked so hard to develop. Wolff`s memoir is filled with rollicking humor and poignant insight into the tenuous identities we construct from class and race.

Author:

Wolff, Mishna

ISBN:

9780312378554

Format:

Hardcover

Pages:

273

Publish Date:

05/26/2009

Publisher:

St Martin`s Pr

Language:

English

Portions copyright 2005 Muze Inc. All rights reserved.