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Growing Up Nigger Rich

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I took Gwendoline Fortune's new memoir-as-novel Growing Up Nigger Rich to read on the plane to San Francisco this weekend. Once started, I could not close it up to sleep, but read straight through start to finish. It is a rich and complex novel, well-wrought and fascinating, especially for someone like me who did not grow up in the South, or in America at all, but in Australia.
The story centers on Gayla Tyner, daughter of a respected Black doctor in Carolton, South Carolina, who comes back home to the painful task of confronting, and eventually overcoming, old hurts. As Fortune says, It takes a lot of weight to break open the stones.'
Gayla's story gives us a different perspective on growing up in the segregated South. It gives us the world of the educated, upper-class Black, showing us what it was like to feel equal, even superior, to the white people who, by reason of their whiteness, felt free to call her nigger coon,' jigaboo,' darky,' tarbaby,' old yellow thing,' a world where even the compliment of being asked to sing for wealthy white groups, who thought nobody could sing like "the Colored,"' was an insult, a world of dislocation, of not knowing exactly where we're from in Africa,' of white relatives who don't come to Christmas dinner.'
Gayla's world is richly peopled by characters who walk right off the page into the heart. Their stories wind in and out of each other, turning back to look behind, leaping forward to peer into the future, a kaleidoscope of past, present, and hoped-for all happening together, the way they do in all of us.
Much in this rich layering is dark, but the reader is not left in darkness. With her keen eye for the telling detail, Fortune gives us glimpses of the hope that has grown up since desegregation: a black hand in a white, a passing smile from white to black, a reference to the easiness together of black and white in her children's generation.
Running through Gayla's story is the story of her husband, George, a compulsive and eventually doomed philanderer, who loved women . . . Tall, short, light, dark, young, or a little mature. The only ladies George ignored were ugly ones.' Fortune shows him, a newly minted PhD, applying for his first real job, as an Aeronautical Engineer, and being redirected to Altman's Custodial Placement.' His story gives Fortune the vehicle to voice her concern for the plight of her generation's Black man who, knew how it felt to be invisible,' and as a result, can't move forward, and . . . will not move backward.'
Nigger Rich has a strong visual and tactile impact. Gayla's neighborhood comes alive with wonderful details of food and clothes and customs, the sound of voices. She gives us a place where dogs wag their tails in simple pleasure for a clear, warm day,' a place of old women, the grandmothers, who nurture all the children of their neighborhood.' Here is a funeral feast set out on the round, oak dining table, baskets of golden, hot, homemade rolls wrapped in large, white, starched, cotton napkins, a buttery aroma announcing their entrance . . . Silver platters high with home-fried chicken, cut-glass bowls of creamy potato salad edged with slivers of oily pimiento, and sliced boiled eggs sprinkled with paprika, lined the dining table and sideboard. Coconut, pecan, and sweet potato pies filled two card tables because there was no room for them anywhere else.'
Fortune spends some time considering the concept of how to name her people: Black? Negro? Colored? African American? She comes down to the delicious notion of People of Color.' What a lovely phrase, and so apt. Never have I read a story with such a feast of skin color: yellow, high-yellow, molasses, umber, caramel, black-as-night, coffee, honey, cocoa, taupe, bamboo-brown, copper, buttered toast, henna, ebony, tea, chocolate. It's like a poem, or as one of her people says, "There's nothing prettier than a roomful of us, all decked out . . . A flower garden with all the colors of the rainbow. Yes, ma'am."
Growing Up Nigger Rich is a lovely book: an engrossing story, an education, and a finger pointing toward hope for true and lasting amity between the races.

This novel centers on the story of one black woman's attempt to come to terms with her heritage and therefore also the stories of the many people who shaped her existence. It is especially important for the light it sheds on a stratum of black society that has been relatively ignored. With many characters and deftly handled subplots, it has the feel of a perceptive, big-hearted, and visionary memoir. It would take a stone to read this book without gaining sympathetic insight into the endless trying to find a way of being, the exquisite and exhausting sensitivity to the nuances of a dangerous environment, the poignancy of living as "reluctant refugees."

Gwendoline Y. Fortune's novel Growing Up Nigger Rich seems at first to tell a straightforward, simple story. College professor Gayla Tyner pays a visit of determined self-discovery to her parents and hometown. Caught in the ambiguities of a troubled marriage relationship, she contemplates her family relationships, connects with old friends, considers her options.
But scratch the surface of Fortune's story, and you find a commentary full of wisdom and experience that proves the old saying that the personal is political. Gayla embodies the peculiar social and economic history of this country. She is a daughter of privilege, yet as vulnerable as any African American to the insults and outrages of racism. Through her story, we see the history of social change in this country and are confronted with troubling questions that remain. Who are we? What have we gained, and what have we lost? And most importantly, where are we going?
Growing Up Nigger Rich is about reconciliation: Gayla's need for personal reconciliation with herself, her father, her husband's infidelity; but also America's need for reconciliation of its present with its past. Thanks to Gwendoline Fortune's skill as a storyteller, this is an alternately painful and exhilirating, ultimately enriching and most engaging process.

(c)2002 Jan Maher

There aren't many books that tell emotionally rich, detailed stories about the lives of second or third generation upper middle class or professional class African Americans. GROWING UP NIGGER RICH is one of those rare books. I compare it favorably with others that tackle the same story telling challenges, the same fictional "turf", with Ntozake Shange's BETSY BROWN, also about remembering growing up the daughter of doctors. Or with Andrea Lee's several books of stories, although Lee's stories aren't reminiscent. Or some of the story/chapers in Gloria Naylor's LINDEN HILLS. Much as I enjoyed and admire these other books, I think Fortune's book is the richest, has the broadest range of characters, the deepest and, to use Du Bois' term, most "doubly conscious" sense of history and identity, and, without stretching this reader's capacity for belief, the most hopeful vision for a future when communication, friendship, understanding, and love can grow and thrive across boundaries of generations, regions, classes, and race. A provocative, healing, and well written book!

It is a truly wonderful book. Certainly an education for us in terms of the dimensions of relationships in a complex culture. It is multi-faceted, a touching examination of all of the relationships of black people: north/south, schooled and unschooled, young and old, relatively rich and poor, men/boys and women/girls---all with both historical and contemporary perspectives.
The book showed in dramatic fashion how children learn how to act, what to be, and what to hope for. Fortune wove a touching web of loyalties amongst family members, children to parents and vice versa...regarding life's ambitions.
Some of the issues were, of course, universal and we all will readily relate to them, too. But the others, those described from the black perspective, from those who lived it--the indignities, the pain, and the qualities necessary to be able to find joy in spite of it, and to survive the slow battle--not yet won. Those were the most revealing and poignant passages in the novel. I recommend it to anyone who has empathy with and goodwill for our fellow Americans.

This novel elegantly portrays the psychological impact that segregation had on those who lived through it-and on the rest of us by association. It is an excellent narrative of our struggles with memory and its hold on our present selves. As an oral historian, I find that this novel breathes life into the painful stories of segregation that I encounter regularly. A must read for anyone who cares about America and the necessary healing our difficult history demands.

Finally, Fortune's prose is both lyrical and concise-overall, a thoroughly satisfying read.

It is a truly wonderful book. Certainly an education for us in terms of the dimensions of relationships in a complex culture. It is multi-faceted, a touching examination of all of the relationships of black people: north/south, schooled and unschooled, young and old, relatively rich and poor, men/boys and women/girls---all with both historical and contemporary perspectives.
The book showed in dramatic fashion how children learn how to act, what to be, and what to hope for. Fortune wove a touching web of loyalties amongst family members, children to parents and vice versa...regarding life's ambitions.
Some of the issues were, of course, universal and we all will readily relate to them, too. But the others, those described from the black perspective, from those who lived it--the indignities, the pain, and the qualities necessary to be able to find joy in spite of it, and to survive the slow battle--not yet won. Those were the most revealing and poignant passages in the novel. I recommend it to anyone who has empathy with and goodwill for our fellow Americans.

The novel's title attacted my attention. I didn't know how to react. The first page was enough to keep me reading. Gayla's story is an eye opener. I didn't know my people had such a depth and variety of experience. The stereotypes we are always given are broken in this novel, reality in fiction.

I hope the author has millions of readers.

This is an enlightening story about the social strata and racial prejudice that existed in a small southern town. The story focuses on a prominent African American professor, Gayla Tyner, who returns to her home after many years of living up north. She finds that although she has grown, the old town has remained the same. The time there allows her to slow down, reflect back on her life and rediscover what really matters.

this is the kind of book that once you start reading it you can't put it down because it speaks the Gospel truth on things.the book in so many ways reminds of you are getting to big for your britches.or have you forgotten who you are?I truly enjoy Her Showcasing Her Intelligence for something more&greater to me still in this Society there is nothing more Dangerous than a Black Person that happens to Be Smart&On the Ball.throw Success into the Mix&"Haters" both Black&White are Scared.but for different reasons.I enjoyed this Book fully.