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Ace of Spades: A Memoir [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

David Matthews
3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)


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This Book Is Bound with "Deckle Edge" Paper
You may have noticed that some of our books are identified as "deckle edge" in the title. Deckle edge books are bound with pages that are made to resemble handmade paper by applying a frayed texture to the edges. Deckle edge is an ornamental feature designed to set certain titles apart from books with machine-cut pages. See a larger image.

Book Description

February 6, 2007 0805081496 978-0805081497 First Edition
A take-no-prisoners tale of growing up without knowing who you are

When David Matthews's mother abandoned him as an infant, she left him with white skin and the rumor that he might be half Jewish. For the next twenty years, he would be torn between his actual life as a black boy in the ghetto of 1980s Baltimore and a largely imagined world of white privilege.
 
While his father, a black activist who counted Malcolm X among his friends, worked long hours as managing editor at the Baltimore Afro-American, David spent his early years escaping wicked-stepmother types and nursing an eleven-hour-a-day TV habit alongside his grandmother in her old-folks-home apartment. In Reagan-era America, there was no box marked "Other," no multiculturalism or self-serving political correctness, only a young boy's need to make it in a clearly segregated world where white meant "have" and black meant "have not." Without particular allegiance to either, David careened in and out of community college, dead-end jobs, his father's life, and girls' pants.
 
A bracing yet hilarious reinvention of the American story of passing, Ace of Spades marks the debut of an irresistible and fiercely original new voice.


Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The son of an African-American father and a Jewish mother, Matthews tells of growing up racially mixed in Baltimore, Md., during the 1970s and '80s. Soon after his birth, Matthews's mother, a victim of schizophrenia, disappears from his life, and his father, "a prominent black journalist," moves through a series of jobs and relationships as Matthews begins a lifelong struggle with the circumstances of his ambiguous racial heritage. Adults in various states of mental and emotional disarray pass through Matthews's life. Some of his father's girlfriends are abusive ("She passed her cigarette from her clipping hand to her mouth, and... plunged a dinner fork into the bony flesh between my shoulder blades"); some are kind. As his father spends more and more of his time at work, Matthews comes into the care of his beloved grandmother. Until her death, this kindly woman will be at the eye of the storm that is his life. Unsurprisingly, Matthews drifts—into drugs, petty crime and a general slackness—which is the central problem here. While Matthews piles up nicely crafted anecdotes and a list of intriguing characters, there is a lack of tension, leaving a flat narrative. This memoir is long on adolescent male observation ("Julie, an Art Institute coed with apple cheeks and honeydew breasts...") and rather short on resonant revelation. Matthews builds a lot of momentum through the course of his tale, but with little genuine payoff. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School—Matthews was born in late 1967 to an African-American father who was a dedicated journalist and his apparently unbalanced white Jewish wife who, with no word of warning to her husband, took her son to Israel shortly after giving birth. The boy was quickly retrieved, and he never saw her again. This memoir richly describes the childhood, youth, and early manhood of a bright and angry person. Stymied by his lack of a mother, his inability to own his racial identity, and the vagaries of every boyhood, such as filial disobedience and posturing within the peer group, Matthews led a life that included almost enough to eat, one or two good friends, and a late-dawning subscription to black pride. Contemporary teens of all backgrounds can learn a lot from Matthews, including the fact that maturity brings change to one's beliefs and outlook as well as to one's appearance and degree of personal power. Some of what he offers is provocative enough to invite book discussion or classroom debate, while much of his story clarifies a period and a place by personalizing them.—Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.; First Edition edition (February 6, 2007)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0805081496
  • ISBN-13: 978-0805081497
  • Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,610,776 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars A refreshingly honest memoir about growing up biracial February 14, 2007
Format:Hardcover
Black men writing about their Jewish mothers seems to be a trend as of late (think James McBride's THE COLOR OF WATER). Nevertheless, this book reads fresh to me, perhaps because of the to-the-day decade between ACE OF SPADES and the parenthesized McBride account. My memory of THE COLOR OF WATER was beginning to fade, and David Matthews's memoir has stepped up to take its place as the biracial book most present in my mind.

The story is set around Matthews's childhood and young adult years in Baltimore, trying to find his identity in a black/white world. His Jewish mother leaves him when he is just a baby, and he is raised by his submissive/activist father. "Black" to Matthews is a disease, a melanin destined for a life of pain and destruction. His young self takes a pessimistic stance against the black race's ability to become equal with their white counterparts in American society, and he therefore tries to separate himself from this second-class life and from the father he sees as weak and ineffectual.

But things aren't that easy. The white side accepts him only when his blackness is beaten down so strongly that they don't catch the whiff of its scent. His exotic features raise questions and eyebrows, and he forever has to squelch one side of himself in order for the other side to live peaceably in his truculent world. In an area of town where the privileged whites are becoming the minority --- and where the blacks are taking over in number, force and resentment of their status --- his part of town does not allow for subtleties of color or of a mixed-race identity.

Matthews's vocabulary is huge, and even the college-educated will find numerous words that they have never come across before. His breadth of the English language put me to shame to such a degree that I began jotting down the unfamiliar words, giving up after two pages because it distracted too much from the flow of the story. Luckily for me, and thus for the majority of readers, his incredible vocabulary won't render the story incomprehensible. For the most part, these terms are used in such a context that the individual can gather their meaning or at least understand the sentence even if the words were taken out.

Matthews's honesty in this memoir is refreshing. He doesn't hide his prejudice; he only explains the logicality of why it existed in the first place. His plethora of self-contradictions rings true to a biracial teenager in the midst of finding himself. In fact, all the characters are presented as the well-rounded individuals they undoubtedly are, each on their own path to self-realization and each with their own views of the world.

ACE OF SPADES has special significance for me because I, too, am biracial --- my father is black and my mother white. Reading this book is like reading about myself, and I'm sure the same will be true for every other biracial American, of which there is an increasingly large number. It will, however, resound the most strongly with those of us who are of Matthews's generation and older, since being of a mixed racial heritage is now becoming trendy in and of itself. The memoir speaks of an America at a crossroads --- destined to find a new, less polarized identity for itself. This crossroads is exactly what Matthews faces and overcomes.

--- Reviewed by Reviewed by Shannon Luders-Manuel
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars And now, for something completely different... February 10, 2007
Format:Hardcover
I will try to describe this book, but it is a very difficult book to describe. If you like, you can skip what I have to say, and refer back to the 4 stars I have given it--with the understanding that I refuse to give 5 stars to anything on principal. This book gets close, however. Ace of Spades is a memoir about the David Matthews' experiences as a "mixed" (white looking) boy and young man in the depressed black neighborhoods of Baltimore. The story is about how he fakes a "Jewish" identity, rather than live as a black boy... an identity he views as the lowest rung on the social totem pole in 1980's America.

This book is in fact about an America many people will recognize since the end of the viet nam war, until right now in our nation's history. Matthews' personal story seems to weave in and out of major historical events and turning points in our culture; and he deftly manages to loop major world events right back into his solitary journey. Malcolm X, Fidel Castro, The Six Day War--these people and places telescope into Matthews' injured, wry tale of abandonment. The author never met his real life Jewish mother, so his "Jewish" identity-grab is a painful (and painfully funny) act of self-sabotage and cultural betrayal, that reminded me of the character Coleman Silk in "The Human Stain" by Philip Roth. I had to remind myself that these excruciating (it's like watching a car wreck in slow-motion) situations were someone's life, and I felt the necessity of his choices at every turn. The world he describes, even if he imagines it, seems like a very scary and confining place.

I never forgive him for his actions--for example burning a cross(even this scene he wrings a laugh from)--but I understand them.

His writing style is long and languid, or short and punchy. Sometimes it's lyrical, and sometimes it punches you in the gut. It is refreshing to read someone with a style that speaks to a mastery of the English language, rather than a mastery of being stylish for the sake of it. Buy a good dictionary. You will need one.

This book is so difficult to categorize... It is foremost simply a wonderful/terrible tale of growing up, not so different from Jean Shepherd, or even Augusten Burroughs or Frank McCourt. There are moments of biting social observation, a few of which I could do without, but most of which were either humorous or insightful, usually both.

There are quirky footnotes, which take getting used to, but they are so related to the themes being explored, you almost begin to miss them when too many pages go by without them--and in fact start looking for them, kind of like a prize in a box of cereal.

There's even a jarring transition into a scene written in movie format---and it gives a real immediacy and cinematic quality to the chapter, almost like floating between a book and a movie. Some people may find it gimmicky, but by the time it appears in the book, there's been well-earned flourishes, so even if I can tell he's reaching, it seems like he's reaching for something larger than his own small, scary, story.

There is a brutal and beautiful honesty to this book, and I would be lying if I said that parts of it were not ugly. The author seems to spare nothing in his search for self. There is no fault he will not expose to the light of day, gambling (and winning in my case) on the fact that when any redemtion comes he will have earned it and overcome a lot to get there. I have no expertise in racial matters, this book was left on my nightstand by my fiance and I picked it up. There maybe people of mixed-race backgrounds who feel more deeply some of the things Matthews talks about/lives through, but this book is actually about pain, loss, motherhood, fatherhood, sexual immaturity, sexual maturity, and black and white and Jewish identities in America. I like books that aim high even if they sometimes miss, and yes this book sometimes misses. But when he scores, it is dead center bullseye. Highly, highly recommended.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
By Dolores
Format:Hardcover
Ace of Spades by David Matthews... I must pause before writing this review to thoroughly gather my thoughts about this intense, sweet, brutal, entertaining, bitingly witty, suspenseful, ugly, beautiful story. The book is challenging on many levels. The vocabulary, on occasion, is daunting, to say the least. The subject matter of race in society, in and of itself, is difficult to look at... honestly. The recollections of the author, the thoughts surrounding the stories of his life, are, at times, difficult stories to embrace due to their harshness and vulgarity. All of this makes for a challenging read. With that said, after finishing the book, I found myself moved beyond what I'd expected. The final chapters put things in perspective for me. All at once, I was able to understand and appreciate the author, and they way in which he chose to tell his story, in a much different light. I, also, had a sense that this was a very important book, and was grateful to have read it. In my opinion, the author's unique perspective and experience with racism and bigotry is an invaluable point of view that needs to be heard in the current discussion of racism and bigotry in America.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars Verbose, childish and borderline vulgar
I cannot recommend this book. I was constantly turned off by the author's overuse of big words and manifest self-aggrandizement. Read more
Published 17 months ago by Jerry L. Mcbride
5.0 out of 5 stars beautiful and moving
This is a beautiful book.
The author's strength is in his storytelling, describing a harsh environment that many of us on a fundamental level may not relate to, but can either... Read more
Published on January 29, 2010 by Aquarius6
1.0 out of 5 stars A Memoir
This was a boring book. I would not recommend this book to anyone. I will donate this book to good will and maybe someone else will enjoy it. Read more
Published on January 12, 2010 by LADY L
2.0 out of 5 stars A big ego and bad editing make for a troubling read
I was given this book and read it with great expectations. Matthews can write and he's got a great story to tell, but stylistically he's all over the place. Read more
Published on December 30, 2009 by Barbara Swan
5.0 out of 5 stars LOVING THIS
I'm only half way through the book and I'm absolutely loving it. Originally, I thought it was going to be a bit too heavy in subject matter and consist of things that are either... Read more
Published on October 2, 2008 by Sarah Lewitinn
3.0 out of 5 stars Sadly disappointed....
I had seen the author on several talk shows and found his life story to be very interesting and inspiring. Read more
Published on September 7, 2008 by Kimberly D. Norgon
5.0 out of 5 stars A compelling literary memoir, a singular treasure!
I've written a lengthier review of the book on the hardcover link, but purchased the kindle version for my husband. Read more
Published on March 7, 2008 by Sandra A.
1.0 out of 5 stars Not worth it.
Not worth it. I'm sure Mr. Matthews has something to say, but I only made it to page #75 before I finally gave up on this book. Read more
Published on February 20, 2008 by B. Green
1.0 out of 5 stars Author's extreme anger displaces possibility of resonance
The last pages of this memoir are beautiful in their simplicity and completeness. The author wraps up the strands of numerous themes in a sentimental manner. Read more
Published on August 21, 2007 by E. DePeace
4.0 out of 5 stars Not the book I thought it would be...
Ace of Spades is not the book I thought it would be, and surpassed my expectations. Often, memoirs are filled either with extraordinary stories, or with flashy, gimmicky writing to... Read more
Published on April 17, 2007 by Princess
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