The rear jacket tells you this:
An White 84-year-old resident of Sawyerville, Alabama except for his 27 years working in the Columbia University Libraries in New York reflects on growing up in the 1940s and 1950s in a racist rural society, describes his own and his family’s interactions with Black neighbors over time, ponders his own evolving attitudes concerning racial matters, and reveals his family’s recent discovery of a number of mixed-race first and second cousins and how that is dealt with in various ways. Along the way he gives a great deal of information about his community, its past, present, and possible future. Using his community as primary focus he thinks about race in America. His conclusions share both hope and despair.
An opinionated old codger, he is not averse to sharing those opinions. He often starts with facts and moves into matters speculative, always trying to clarify wen that occurs.
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Author/teacher/agent Madison Smartt Bell is partly responsible for this work. He had read my earlier memoir (neve published) about my life, found much to like in it, and used parts of it in his essay in Andrew Moore’s “Blue Alabama.” He thought such a memoir had little chance of being published at that time and advised that I cut it down to focus on matters involving race. I made a feeble attempt to whittle and realized quickly that was not feasible: it would take a full rewrite using some of the extant material. This year I chose to do that.
When I wrote Bell what I was up to, he replied that since that advice what is being accepted by publishers has changed so that even the more focused work was unlikely to find a home and suggested self-publication as the best way to go. This advice did not come as a surprise, for I had already come to that conclusion.
I wasn’t sure I could deal with Amazon’s Kindle Publishing (as it is now called) but decided to give it a try. I managed reasonably well, but once I got paperback and eBook up and downloaded and started reading the Kindle version I realized that in spite of all my diligence there were far too many errors. I made a number of corrections (mostly wrong words: butt instead of but, Elise instead of Eloise) in both manuscripts and squeezed them through again. (Same text, but slightly different formatting for the 2 types, so every correction had to be made twice.) The results are not as perfect as one might hope but better than one might expect from a man in his middle 80s with vision problems.
At this writing they are available only from Amazon but I expect them to turn up on Barns & Noble and other sites before too long. The paperback probably can be ordered through your local bookstore. I priced the eBook as low as Amazon would permit and the paperback almost as low: I write for my own sanity not expecting much in the way of revenue.
An opinionated old codger, he is not averse to sharing those opinions. He often starts with facts and moves into matters speculative, always trying to clarify wen that occurs.
###
Author/teacher/agent Madison Smartt Bell is partly responsible for this work. He had read my earlier memoir (neve published) about my life, found much to like in it, and used parts of it in his essay in Andrew Moore’s “Blue Alabama.” He thought such a memoir had little chance of being published at that time and advised that I cut it down to focus on matters involving race. I made a feeble attempt to whittle and realized quickly that was not feasible: it would take a full rewrite using some of the extant material. This year I chose to do that.
When I wrote Bell what I was up to, he replied that since that advice what is being accepted by publishers has changed so that even the more focused work was unlikely to find a home and suggested self-publication as the best way to go. This advice did not come as a surprise, for I had already come to that conclusion.
I wasn’t sure I could deal with Amazon’s Kindle Publishing (as it is now called) but decided to give it a try. I managed reasonably well, but once I got paperback and eBook up and downloaded and started reading the Kindle version I realized that in spite of all my diligence there were far too many errors. I made a number of corrections (mostly wrong words: butt instead of but, Elise instead of Eloise) in both manuscripts and squeezed them through again. (Same text, but slightly different formatting for the 2 types, so every correction had to be made twice.) The results are not as perfect as one might hope but better than one might expect from a man in his middle 80s with vision problems.
At this writing they are available only from Amazon but I expect them to turn up on Barns & Noble and other sites before too long. The paperback probably can be ordered through your local bookstore. I priced the eBook as low as Amazon would permit and the paperback almost as low: I write for my own sanity not expecting much in the way of revenue.
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