I'm Down: A Memoir [Hardcover]

Mishna Wolff (Author)

Book Description

Release date: May 26, 2009

      Mishna Wolff grew up in a poor black neighborhood with her single father, a white man who truly believed he was black.  “He strutted around with a short perm, a Cosby-esqe sweater, gold chains and a Kangol—telling jokes like Redd Fox, and giving advice like Jesse Jackson.  You couldn’t tell my father he was white.  Believe me, I tried,” writes Wolff.  And so from early childhood on, her father began his crusade to make his white daughter Down. 

     Unfortunately, Mishna didn’t quite fit in with the neighborhood kids: she couldn’t dance, she couldn’t sing, she couldn’t double dutch and she was the worst player on her all-black basketball team.  She was shy, uncool and painfully white.  And yet when she was suddenly sent to a rich white school, she found she was too “black” to fit in with her white classmates. 

      I’m Down is a hip, hysterical and at the same time beautiful memoir that will have you howling with laughter, recommending it to friends and questioning what it means to be black and white in America.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Humorist and former model Wolff details her childhood growing up in an all-black Seattle neighborhood with a white father who wanted to be black in this amusing memoir. Wolff never quite fit in with the neighborhood kids, despite her father's urgings that she make friends with the sisters on the block. Her father was raised in a similar neighborhood and—after a brief stint as a hippie in Vermont—returned to Seattle and settled into life as a self-proclaimed black man. Wolff and her younger, more outgoing sister, Anora, are taught to embrace all things black, just like their father and his string of black girlfriends. Just as Wolff finds her footing in the local elementary school (after having mastered the art of capping: think yo mama jokes), her mother, recently divorced from her father and living as a Buddhist, decides to enroll Wolff in the Individual Progress Program, a school for gifted children. Once again, Wolff finds herself the outcast among the wealthy white kids who own horses and take lavish vacations. While Wolff is adept at balancing humorous memories with more poignant moments of a daughter trying to earn her father's admiration, the result is more a series of vignettes than a cohesive memoir. (June)
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From Bookmarks Magazine

In this coming-of-age memoir, Wolff tackles an uncomfortable, even taboo subject: racial tension and a young white girl's attempt to assimilate into black culture. Most critics were greatly affected by Wolff's experiences -- many times hilarious and educational, but often quite sad. Wolff nonetheless maintains a light tone throughout as she details her childhood in rich dialogue and detail. A few reviewers commented that parts of her life read like a sitcom, albeit with little drama (or even trauma, the stuff of memoirs). Only the Washington Post diverged from other critics in its assessment that Wolff failed to explain her father's own interesting immersion in black culture. Most readers, however, will embrace both Wolff's and her father's stories.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; First edition (May 26, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312378556
• ISBN-13: 978-0312378554
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 1.1 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (88 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #670,587 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 39 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Memoir I've Read Since "Liar's Club" April 15, 2009

By Beldini VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

What a great book! Fun, moving, and with a really unexpected ending. Though the promo material highlights her childhood as a white girl in a black neighborhood, this memoir is a more sophisticated story--and more universal story -- of a child who can't find her place in her family. And the most moving aspect of this book is her success in finding a place in the world, and what it ultimately costs her. Yes, it's heartbreaking in places, but it's hysterical in others and most importantly -- the story is compelling. I literally couldn't put this book down and I have the circles under my eyes to prove it.

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars This semi-autobiograpical memoir is really great airplane food! April 8, 2009

By Mendicant Pigeon

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Wow, apart from a bird identification book, this is the very first amazon vine product that I might have purchased in 'real life' and I'm happy to say that this is definitely a worthwhile acquisition.
Before we begin let's establish what this book is not: It is not hilarious or tragic as a cover blurb indicates. It is also not, strictly speaking, truly autobiographical as the author declaims up front something to the effect that many of the things in the book might never have happened and that she uses composites of characters to represent distinct personalities in her story.
What this book is is a very charming, often poignant, quite incisive, well-told story based on the remembrances of a caucasian woman whose childhood was spent living in a deteriorating Seattle neighborhood with a father who chose to 'go black.'
Interestingly, it is also a real testimonial to the quality and effectiveness of the the Seattle public school system and civic organizations in their efforts to provide opportunities to its most promising albeit less privileged (read wealthy) chidren.
The story revolves around a white girl who, along with her younger sister remain in the custody of her ne'er do well father who has fashioned himself a black man in a white man's body. They live in an urban Seattle neighborhood which has become predominantly black; a change that the girls' father revels in.
The author does a wonderful job of describing the struggles and triumphs she experiences as she struggles with the multiple challenges of adolescence; parental divorce; racial comity, difference and divide; and familial and peer group strife.
A really great thing about the book is that the author is able to give insightful analysis of the dynamics of the unfolding tale as if she was fully cognizant of them as a little girl. Of course the picture only became clear to her later, in adulthood, which is undoubtedly why she makes her disclaimer about the events depicted in the book.
Ms. Wolff knows how to spin a story and once you begin this book I doubt that you will want to put it down until you have finished it.
I began reading it on a flight from the West Coast to the East coast and found the book to be the perfect length for this journey as I got through the first third on the first leg and finished up the rest just as we were making the approach to land on the second leg: Brilliant!
You will definitely become emotionally invested in this book and I recommend it as a very satisfying entertainment that is better than mere candy or a popcorn movie.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A very intriguing memoir April 11, 2009

By Andrew Parodi TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

I'M DOWN is the intriguing story about a young white girl growing up in a predominantly African American neighborhood. Her father, who was not African American, nonetheless grew up in the same neighorhood and embraced the African American culture as his own. He was troubled that his daughter did not embrace the culture as her own, and proceeded to try to steer his daughter in that direction.

It's really an astonishing story. It resonated personally for me because it is set in the African American neighorhoods of Seattle, and I came of age only three hours away in the African American neighorhoods of Portland. I could relate to a great deal of what the author wrote about, and it was interesting to read about another African American community in the Pacific Northwest. I believe there is a national perspective which holds that the African American communities are largely confined to California, Detroit, New York, and the South.

There's just a great deal in this book I can relate to. This book actually helped me come to terms with aspects of my life. In my life situation, "white" people have always been the minority. So, it was interesting to read an account by another white person who has had the same experience. It's an unusual place to be, a sort of no-man's-land. When one grows up in a situation like this, one is white, but not really; one is of-color, but not really.

And this book probably has one of the best covers I've ever seen on a book. I literally remember kids coming to school with afros that look like that! In high school I myself actually had corn rows and for a time I worked at an African clothing boutique.