The House of Joshua: Meditations on Family and Place (Texts and Contexts) [Hardcover]

Mindy Thompson Fullilove (Author)

Book Description

Series: Texts and Contexts | Publication Date: March 1, 1999

Mindy Thompson Fullilove offers a series of meditations on her remarkable family and the places where they have lived. She lovingly recalls her parents: her father, a black leader of the labor movement, and her mother, a white woman whose boundless generosity was always in conflict with the racial divisions of the world around her. "Place" is a major actor in her family story, and in the course of bringing the backgrounds of six generations into the foreground, Fullilove uncovers the many lives—her own included—that are rooted in those places.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Psychologist Fullilove's poetic family reminiscences form the core of her inquiry into the critical role of place and family in human psychology. She deftly draws on myths and folktales and on medical, sociological, cultural and religious insights to support her conclusion that political and economic displacement will be a central problem of the 21st century. Fullilove begins her consistently original and provocative study with a discussion of her father's hopes for inner-city ghetto communities. The first black paid organizer for the United Electric, Radio and Machine Workers Union of America, and blacklisted in the McCarthy era, he believed that by "embracing" the places assigned to them by "power relations," oppressed populations could create a consciousness of community that would supersede the ghettos' intended purpose. In 1950, when Fullilove was born, her white mother "began her life as Persephone," living 51 weeks in Orange, N.J., with her black husband, and returning alone to her parents' all-white world in Ohio for one week of the year. In 1974, enthusiastic and idealistic, Fullilove entered Columbia Medical School and began the process of finding her place there, of connecting being a doctor to the business of hospitals that routinely put their growth ahead of the needs of surrounding neighborhoods. Her own medical credo includes belief in "the sanctity of the human spirit," and that "the business of medicine cannot snuff out the deeper magic of doctoring." In recalling her teenage daughter's summers at camp, Fullilove shows their joined yet individual discoveries about the "need to nourish the spirit that keeps the body, the first place in which we live, moving." This insight into the inner places that define us illustrates the complexity of Fullilove's outlook, despite its seeming simplicity.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Fullilove (psychiatry, Columbia Univ.) discusses the importance of a sense of place in what turns out to be more of a biography of herself and her family than a sociological study. She begins with her father, a black labor leader, and her mother, a white woman who loved him fiercely but had to deny him and her children to her own family. Fullilove watches her father as he loses his job and his bearings for several years and then becomes interested in his community's schools. She continues the study of her life by looking at her experiences with neighbors, her first marriage, medical school, and her relationship with her current husband, who was actively involved in SNCC, and her children, two of whom are adopted. Fullilove movingly describes family and friends as she watches her children find their own senses of place; she and her husband realize that their developing sense of community outweighs their hatred of their house, a situation Fullilove details with humor. A unique autobiographical essay.ADanna C. Bell-Russel, Library of Congress
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 168 pages
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press; illustrated edition edition (March 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0803220073
• ISBN-13: 978-0803220072
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,517,803 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A truly insightful exploration of environment and place., March 16, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The House of Joshua: Meditations on Family and Place (Texts and Contexts) (Hardcover)

The author challenges the reader to understand how environment and place shape who we are. After reading this book you will never again take the places in your life for granted. The author's poignant essays will touch your spirit and inspire you to explore the places which make you who you are.