Customer Reviews

Come By Here: My Mother's Life

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This intimate look at race and its implications captured me the minute I opened this book. Clarence Major, the well-known poet, has written a beautiful and touching memoir on his mother's story. Although African American, Inez realized she could pass as a white woman with her light skin and was determined to not let Jim Crow laws hinder on her life. She embarks on a double identity in order to help her family. In the end, this sacrifice leads to self-discovery and offers readers an important look at racial challenges in our recent history.

I've never read anything else by Clarence Major but he does a splendid job of sharing his mother's compelling life as a light-skinned African-American in the days of segregation. Inez's voice is intimate but honest about what she had to do to survive an abusive husband while keeping her childen safe. Inez's eventual move to Chicago to make a better life for herself and her children is full of rich detail. It is during this time she passes herself off as white in order to get good jobs. Inez's unique perspective as a black woman living in a white world is well worth reading. I was also struck by her continuing goal to bring her children to Chicago and also improve her own life. It is a hard book to put down and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I read this book within a day, and I enjoyed it. Really. I used to feel contempt for those who passed for white, but in order for one to do better economically and have a more comfortable life, you had to do it. In this book, you have a woman born to a white father and black woman, who survives a difficult marriage and goes to Chicago to make a better life for her and her children. Read it and enjoy.