A re-creation of what it was like to grow up in the hill town of Piedmont, West Virginia, in the 1950s and 1960s. Recalling an age at which the town and people represented his known universe, Gates describes the clannish pride of the family and the sense of place that characterized Piedmont, with its beautiful countryside, its paper mill, whose sulphurous fumes permeated the air but brought the town its prosperity, and the social event of the year, the annual mill picnic. The young Gates's consciousness takes in "colored ...
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A re-creation of what it was like to grow up in the hill town of Piedmont, West Virginia, in the 1950s and 1960s. Recalling an age at which the town and people represented his known universe, Gates describes the clannish pride of the family and the sense of place that characterized Piedmont, with its beautiful countryside, its paper mill, whose sulphurous fumes permeated the air but brought the town its prosperity, and the social event of the year, the annual mill picnic. The young Gates's consciousness takes in "colored people" in a time when segregation was still influential. He tells of huge Sunday meals, the ingenious hairdressing methods needed for the much-prized "good hair", the traumas of teenage love and the free and easy sexual relations that provided the Piedmont people with unending gossip. Integrated education came to Piedmont, but cross-racial dating was still taboo. Gates's brother's scholarly career suffered because of the colour bar. A coloured person appearing on television was still an event. But it was through the window of television that the story of the civil rights movement came to Piedmont, and eventually things changed - Gates succeeded in becoming a scholar, and his mother triumphed when she bought the house where she had once laboured as a cleaning woman. Full of detailed description and humour, this account combines the celebration of a community, an epic time in the history of a race and a boy's coming of age.
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Seller's Description:
New York. 1994. May 1994. Knopf. 1st Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 0679421793. 216 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Michael Bierut/Pentagram. Signed by the Author. keywords: Autobiography America African American. FROM THE PUBLISHER-In this rich memoir of his early life, the celebrated scholar and writer Henry Louis Gates, Jr., gives us an indelible portrait of a vanished America. Born in 1950, he grew up in Piedmont (population 2, 565), a West Virginia town perched on the side of a hill in the Allegheny Mountains. He was raised in a small, intimate, middle-class ‘colored' community where secrets and haircuts were prime commodities and the major social event was the annual mill picnic. It was a time when the United States was just crossing the threshold into desegregation (the Piedmont schools were integrated the year before Gates entered first grade); when racial boundaries were constantly shifting and progress was measured primarily by the number of black faces that appeared on television. But Gates's story is not only a story about race. It is the story of a family, of a village, and of a special time and place in American history. Gates vividly recalls the characters who peopled his childhood: from his first love, the bookworm Linda, to Uncle Earkie the Turkey, who shared his views on the opposite sex with whoever would listen, to his grandmother Big Mom, founder of the local Episcopal church, to the exuberant Reverend Monroe, who captured many a soul. And of course the person who had the greatest influence on young Skip, his mother-a fearless, determined woman who was famous for her delivery of eulogies at funerals, who was the first colored secretary of the Piedmont PTA, and who, as an older woman, triumphantly acquired the house where she had worked as a young girl. Through Gates's memories and portraits of the people in his early life, be conveys a deep sense of and longing for the extended family and close community that was so much a part of an earlier America. inventory #19761.
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Seller's Description:
Fine in fine dust jacket. FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING + LIKE NEW CONDITION + ORIGINAL HARDBACK FORMAT, PROTECTED BY A MYLAR COVER; COLLECTING BOOKS SINCE 1988, SELLING BOOKS SINCE 2008. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. 216 p. Audience: General/trade.
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Seller's Description:
Good. Signed Copy First edition copy. Collectible-Good. Good dust jacket. Inscribed by author on title page. Book slanted and foxed. In protective mylar cover. (african american, west virginia, childhood, youth)