Multicolored Memories of a Black Southern Girl (Women in Southern Culture) - Hardcover

Oliver, Kitty

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0813122082 ISBN 13: 9780813122083

Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky, 2001

Synopsis

A telling memoir by an exciting new voice, Multicolored Memories of a Black Southern Girl explores journalist Kitty Oliver's coming of age as she makes the crossing from an all-black to a predominantly white world.

Born and raised in an all-black area of Jacksonville, Florida, Oliver was one of the first African American freshmen to enter the University of Florida. Though she chronicles the strains of her transition from Jim Crow to desegregation, this book is much more than a memoir of the turbulent sixties. It is an upbeat journal of self-discovery in the aftermath of that decade, a look at one woman's coming to terms with living an integrated life in America. With humor, poignancy, and lyrical language (reminiscent at times of another Florida writer, Zora Neale Hurston), Oliver shares her passage from the "old world" to the new -- an immigrant's journey indicative of the American experience.

Blending past and present, she searches for roots from the Gullah or "Geechee" culture of South Carolina to the urban streets of northern Florida to the multicultural mix of South Florida's diverse ethnic cultures, serving up family stories with large helpings of southern "folktalk," food, and music along the way.

About this title

About the Author:

Kitty Oliver worked for the Miami Herald for nineteen years, she is now Writer in Residence at Florida Atlantic University.

Review:

"Oliver has a vibrant, evocative story to tell." -- Athens Banner-Herald

"Captures of personal tumult of coming-of-age in the 1960s with the life-changing movements for civil and women's rights." -- Booklist

"An intimate and captivating portrait of an African-American, female, Floridian, baby-boomer's life." -- Florida Forum

"A complex and multi-layered story, with photographs and art, of coming of age in the Jim Crow South after the Second World War." -- Florida Historical Quarterly

"This charming little book is the memoir of Kitty Oliver, one of the first African-American students to attend the desegregated University of Florida in 1965." -- Florida Today

"Chronicles the strains of Oliver's transition from the Jim Crow South to desegregation, but her memoir is also an up-beat journal of self-discovery." -- Jacksonville Free Press

"Oliver is a veteran South Florida journalist, and her story, told without rancor, speaks directly to the black female experience of her generation." -- Johnson City Press

"A thinking woman's memoir of a journey with many side trips from a Black girl's childhood in segregated Jacksonville, Florida, through a coming-of-age reinvention of her self as 'a product of the civil rights movement, of integration, of all the promises it held' and back to her origins as an archaeologist of her own past.... Written with such poetic sensitivity, with such attention to sensory detail and the cadences of language, that the reader is likely to forget that this delightful field trip is also meant to be educational." -- Judith Ortiz Cofer

"A rich, 'real' reading -- part travelogue, part memoir -- tender and thoughtful both. This is a rare and generous memorial of a black girl and the black south." -- Karla Holloway

"A beautifully written memoir.... filled with rich prose. Oliver, one of 35 African Americans to integrate the University of Florida in 1965, shares her college experiences in Gainesville, traces her Gullah roots in South Carolina, and offers lively stories of her family -- all enhanced by large doses of Southern folktales, food, and music." -- Library Journal

About this edition

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0813122082
• ISBN 13: 9780813122083
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 173