Chasing Me to My Grave by Winfred Rembert won
the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 2022. It is an “as told to” autobiography
of growing up in Jim Crow Georgia. The author saw and experienced the horrors
of prejudice, discrimination, and white supremacy. “The
great evil of American slavery [was] the insidious construct of white supremacy.”
After being beaten, lynched, and jailed, he found success as an artist
documenting the events of his youth. His autobiography recounts his unlikely
story. “They probably get behind my back and say, ‘Ah, shit. That ain’t never
happened.’” A document of the man and an era that isn’t over yet.Three autobiographies of prejudice and abuse
show the horror of organized hatred and the possibility for an individual to
overcome it.
Holocaust in Germany: Nightby by Elie Wiesel
Apartheid in South Africa: Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
White Supremacy in the United States: ChasingMe to My Grave by Winfred Rembert
All three books tell the story of unimaginable
abuse from the perspective of someone who has survived. This distance and the
knowledge that the author survived allows the reader to learn the history
without experiencing the trauma. Hopefully, these books serve as inoculations-mild
experiences that prevent more serious repetitions of the disease.
“As an Amazon
Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.”
Check out https://amzn.to/2SpaDMN to see my books.
Check out https://amazon.com/shop/influencer-20171115075 for book recommendations.
https://amzn.to/3SXG6Eg
The Man Who Invented Christmas by Les Standiford is an excellent companion to A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. The
book is a Charles Dickens biography with an emphasis on A Christmas Carol as a
turning point in Dickens’ writing career. With this little book, Charles
Dickens got into the business of publishing displaced the Christmas goose with
the Christmas turkey. He also helped redeem Christmas itself, which was still
suffering from when Cromwell and the Puritans discouraged it as pagan.
