The Hottest Water in Chicago - Softcover

Pemberton, Gayle

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0385468423 ISBN 13: 9780385468428

Publisher: Anchor Books, 1993

Synopsis

Gayle Pemberton shares the accumulated revelations of a lifetime of observation in sixteen provocative autobiographical essays, interweaving her own history and that of her family with reflections on American literature, art, music, and film. Building on the tradition of such writers as W.E.B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, and Ralph Ellison, but with a wisdom and sharp wit uniquely her own, Pemberton moves from the integration of a transient hotel in Chicago to a party on that city's Gold Coast; from journeys by train and the memories they provoke to reflections on race aboard ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean; from the Mickey Mouse Club to the ghost of Emmett Till; from Harvard to Hollywood.

About this title

Review

Los Angeles Times Book Review"

Essence"

Publishers Weekly"

A thinking woman's autobiography. An unusual and engaging work, consistently honest and constructive. Los Angeles Times Book Review"

Smart, irreverent and righteously indignant. Pemberton has an eye for the absurd and a talent for expressing the ironies of growing up black in white America. The Hottest Water in Chicago chronicles the sting of racism and the survival of one family's spirit. Essence"

This is luminous social history, at once familiar and transcendent. Publishers Weekly"

-A thinking woman's autobiography. An unusual and engaging work, consistently honest and constructive.- --Los Angeles Times Book Review

-Smart, irreverent and righteously indignant. Pemberton has an eye for the absurd and a talent for expressing the ironies of growing up black in white America. The Hottest Water in Chicago chronicles the sting of racism and the survival of one family's spirit.---Essence

-This is luminous social history, at once familiar and transcendent.---Publishers Weekly

"A thinking woman's autobiography. An unusual and engaging work, consistently honest and constructive."-- "Los Angeles Times Book Review"

About the Author

GAYLE PEMBERTON was born in Saint Paul Minnesota. She has a B.A in English from the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. in English and American literature from Harvard University. She has taught as Smith College, Columbia University, Middlebury College, Northwestern University, Reed College and Bowdin College. She was associate director of African American studies at Princeton before joining Wesleyan in 1994 as chair of the African American studies program and William R. Kenan Professor of the Humanities in the English Department. She currently is under contract with W.W. Norton for a book entitled And the Colored Girls Go...: Black Women and American Cinema.

Edition details

• Publisher: Anchor Books
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0385468423
• ISBN 13: 9780385468428
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 266