Open House: Of Family, Friends, Food, Piano Lessons, and the Search for a Room of My Own [Hardcover]

Patricia J. Williams (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 14, 2004

Open House strings together a delightful array of observations, reminiscences, anecdotes and commentaries by renowned columnist Patricia Williams. Written with her trademark wit and insight, she relates stories about the many facets of her life - as a lawyer, scholar, writer, African-American, descendant of slaves, mother, and single, fifty-something woman - always aware of the ironies inherent in situations when her many identities don't conform to societal expectations. She tells us of her Great Aunt Mary, who crossed the color line one day, while boarding a train; about her Best White Friend, who believes that the only thing standing between the author and an eligible husband is a make-over; about the day she and her family learned how to eat watermelon without fear of racial judgment; and about why she worships Oprah. She also tackles serious subjects, such as cloning and the legacy of slavery and privacy issues in the cyberage, all with her characteristic sparkling humor and originality. Always provocative, never didactic, Open House is an entertaining journey through the rooms of Pat Williams' imagination.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

With a résumé that includes degrees from Wellesley and Harvard Law School, a law professorship at Columbia, a column in the Nation and a trio of books, Williams would seem to have enough material to fill several volumes of memoirs. In this thought-provoking, unconventional one, she combines family history with discourses on everything from race, class and slavery's legacy to why she likes O magazine. One chapter, "The Kitchen," begins with an account of buying herself a cappuccino maker, moves to a consideration of homelessness in New York City, continues on to detail her father's heritage, segues to thoughts on why African-Americans give their children unusual names, returns to cappuccino and her sophisticated godmother, makes its way around to trying to cook a turkey and on from there to other food anecdotes and a description of sharing cinnamon toast and steamed milk with her young son. Williams skillfully integrates her probing analyses of social and political issues with riffs on such topics as turning 50 and Michael Jackson's "carving up his face like a paper doily" to form a fluid whole. The book's most affecting parts are the rich, loving stories about Williams's family, from those born into slavery to a grandfather who graduated from Meharry Medical College in 1907.
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From Booklist

Williams, a law professor, offers her sharp legal and personal perspectives in this collection of essays on a variety of topics from race, politics, and family to personal identity. She recalls a vivacious great-aunt who was indentured as a young girl, later passed for white and married a wealthy white man, and eventually reclaimed her racial identity and settled into a life as the family's grand dame. Williams' participation in Anna Deveare Smith's Institute for Arts and Civic Dialogue provokes her to recognize her hidden talents and longings. The trend toward minorities, most notably Michael Jackson, using plastic surgery prompts observations about standards of beauty. She reveals more of her personal perspective as the mother of an adolescent adopted son, coping with middle age. Williams notes her admiration for Oprah Winfrey for having accomplished with her magazine and her television show the integration of black folks into regular status. Williams has done something similar with her book, which examines race and sex within the context of mundane life and its simple struggles and observations. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (October 14, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374114072
• ISBN-13: 978-0374114077
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,983,892 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Only Book in the Wellesley Bookstore in the 1st week of August 2005!, September 22, 2006

By 

Alexandra (NORTHAMPTON, Morocco) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Open House: Of Family, Friends, Food, Piano Lessons, and the Search for a Room of My Own (Hardcover)

Patricia Williams has a column in the Nation, Diary of a Mad Law Professor, which I found out about

through reading this great book. I was at a music conference at Wellesley last summer and happened

upon this in the bookstore. There were not many other books, but thank God they decided at least

to have something there by an alumna, because the three books I had brought were not wearing well:

1) a cynical though I suppose funny report on Howard Dean's presidential campaign, 2) a book about how

to survive in a nasty office environment and 3) I forget the third. Not great energy! But Williams' book was

very warm and funny. I was particularly admiring of how much she knew of her own family background.

A lot of family background sections in the beginnings of autobiographies can be ho-hum. This one was

a wild ride! It reads as though she knew her ancestors personally. The book is a very important discussion

of race relations and you just want everything to go her way. The college bookstore had a much bigger selection THIS year.

5.0 out of 5 stars We need more writers like Patricia Williams, August 13, 2011

By 

Harriet Washington "Amor libri" (New York City) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Open House: Of Family, Friends, Food, Piano Lessons, and the Search for a Room of My Own (Paperback)

A warm, poignant, beautiful book that reveals Patricia Williams as more than one of the nation's most original and accomplished intellectuals: Reading this you come to know her as an equally brilliant mother, friend and human being.Would that we had more like her.

1 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Amusing Prologue; Poignant Middle; Rather Sad Epilogue, January 22, 2005

By 

A. B. Jackson "andreabjackson" (Yeadon, PA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Open House: Of Family, Friends, Food, Piano Lessons, and the Search for a Room of My Own (Hardcover)

1/22/05 This library borrow had a few gaps(pages that I skimmed and decided that I was satisfied with learning of general content(especially those chapters dealing with the topic of whysome blacks are very pale complexion...I'm sure many of those who are very light compexion don't appreciate the topic either,since it serves no purpose whatsoever and especially since persons the complexion of Cuba Goodins Jr or Oprah Winfrey aren't having to explain why they arn't the maximum African Complexion of darkest blue black....However author Patricia J Williams has a very fine vocabulary which ribbets from every page I ead or skimmed, she has had great opportunity as well as many challenges to confront as a well educated black and it was very sorrowing on the last pages (Pgs 244-245) to see her listing of so many of her peers who've died prematurely(Jerome Culp,Dwight Greene,Mary Jo Frug,Teresa Brennan,Haywood Burns,Shanara Gilbert,Denise Carty-Benia,Andrew Haynes.Her Page 242 mentions author Erma Bombeck and the article re Ms Bombeck helped her to decide to hold "an open house" to celebrate the fact that her son had returned to good health .Ms Bombeck(author of "I hate housework, and also written during a trying period of illness that she wished she'd given more house parties without worry whether peple would approve of how the house looked" The book jacket is beautifully designed by aDebbie Glasserman to represent 5 keys of different sizes and shapes and going in differen directions for Open House of family,friends,food,piano lessons and the search for a "Room of My Own" with two keys on the back jacket perhaps reflecting the words "Current Affairs/Memoir which are written below the critics by authors : Henry Louis Gates Jr, Gloria Steinem, Derrick Bell, Letty Cottin Poprebin, Veronica Chambers, Maurice Berger. 1/22/05 abj