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Pig Candy: Taking My Father South, Taking My Father Home--A Memoir

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Lise Funderburg wrote a moving memoir in tribute to her dying father in Pig Candy: Taking My Father South, Taking My Father Home--A Memoir. The author of Black, White, Other details the last few years of her father's life and the dynamics of their relationship during their travels to rural Jasper County, Georgia, George Funderburg's hometown. Funderburg had a distant relationship with her father for most of her life. She always felt she had to walk on eggshells around him, even as a little girl. George was a demanding, sometimes impossible man who intimidated those around him. Funderburg made the trek with her father several times to his Monticello, Georgia farm from the East Coast where the layers of his life and legacy were revealed to his daughter, peeled away like an onion, sometimes with tears.

George's father, Frederick Douglas Funderburg, was the town doctor who served both the black and white communities beginning in the 1920s. His illustrious climb from rural roots in Alabama to entry into the Columbia University medical program and then tenure in an all-white medical corps in the U.S. Military was possible because of his white-looking appearance. The Funderburgs were of the elite Monticello African American community because of Dr. Funderburg's stature and his keen business acumen at a time of Jim Crow racism and perilous race relations.

George Funderburg attended segregated schools and attended Morehouse College, a men's black college in Atlanta, married twice and had a family while accumulating wealth through lucrative real estate and business ventures in Philadelphia. The matter of race was not a discussion topic George broached with his three daughters and became less of a priority after he and their white mother divorced when Lise, the youngest, was twelve years old. Yet race evidently permeated George's psyche, so much so that he warned his daughter of "Klan Sneaks" referring to the time in his youth when the KKK would make surprise attacks on unsuspecting blacks.


Monticello proved to be quite an education of sorts for Funderburg as she learned to decipher her father's hometown amongst a colorful cast of relatives, friends, employees and associates in the new millennium juxtaposed against the era of his childhood. Although the town had taken down the visible symbols of segregation, the "White Only" signs and now black and white residents easily intermingled in most cases, some becoming successful landowners and part of the community's political infrastructure, there were the underlying subtle signs of yesteryear---self segregation in eating facilities and social situations. When George and his entourage would roll into town, he was the catalyst for the mixing of races with his impromptu parties where the food was plentiful, including the Pig Candy, aptly named for the whole pigs roasted in a specially concocted seasoning mixture. As an adult, Funderburg came to think of her father as a "race man"; perhaps, yet it was difficult for me to get that in this discourse as it is written. I kept waiting for that final layer to be peeled, to reveal the naked core of George's life; there seemed to be so much more to be said. However, this is a worthy read, well-written and well researched of Jasper County's geographical, economical and social/racial history. I recommend for those who enjoy memoirs that delve into the intricacies of familial relationship, especially fathers and daughters.


Dera R. Williams
APOOO BookClub

George Newton Fundenberg is a cantankeous, opionated, black man from rural Georgia who married a white woman, moved to the North, became a successful real estate broker and is the proud father of three daughters. He is difficult to get along with and even more difficult to please. His daughter, Lise, is determined to do just that, get along with and please him before he dies. In the process, she is introduced to the Southern tradition of roasted pig (pig candy), Southern hospitality and Jim Crow laws. This is a beautifully written, vividly painted memoir and a worthwhile read in its own right. Anyone who has dealt with an aging, ailing parent will identify with Lise's struggles and preserverance to bring her relationship with her father to a healthy but loving closure for both of them.

no plot review could do the magic of this book justice--because it's not so much what happens: pickling peaches, say, or, visiting doctors, diners, and rib purveyers. it's the comedic timing, the brilliant, telling details and writing so fine that you can't get through more than a dozen pages without underlining a sentence or two. also, lise is a reliable and honorable narrator who helps you now only understand her relationships but create your own with the complete and complicated characters in the book. it's just too good not to read.

Pig Candy: Taking My Father South, Taking My Father Home--A Memoir

Never, not ever, not Amy Tan, not Toni Morrison, not any of my
favorites (not even Alice Walker) has shown the ability to expose
herself--to bare her proverbial soul, while respecting boundaries;
those of her self, her subjects, her family and her readers. I have
never known any writer, of any gender, to speak so truly and deeply
from within, in such a matter of fact manner while conveying
unparrelled integrity, and without manipulation of the readers' emotions.
No preaching, no judgment; just accessible values and hopefulness, as
if it is an easy, everyday thing to do.

In the novel Pig Candy Lise Funderburg pays tribute to her terminally ill, stroke-impaired father. She recalls the details from their annual trips from his retirement community in Pennsylvania to his summer farm house in Georgia. George Newton Funderburg was a complex man with a colorful background and a thorny past. His life experiences are marked by times of segregated schools, `White's Only' signs and KKK threats. Lise wondered why she and her two sisters had such restricted childhoods but more than that she wanted desperately to get to know her father after years of disconnect. As an aside here, I can relate to the strict upbringing, but now that I'm a parent myself I can look back on it as a form of protection.

Lise reflects on her father's skewed psyche,

"My father won't let Margaret close all of the sunroom blinds to August's wilting midday heat. You can close most of them, he says, as long as you leave two or three open. I want to be able to see the Klan sneaking up on us. He is joking and he is not joking."

Lise puts on a brave face and deals with her father's cancer and cantankerous manner, all the while trying to gain some much needed closure to their strained relationship. George's e-mail is a good example of his headstrong nature.

Subject: Eddie Frank's Ungracious Behavior.

dear Jackie and Eddie,

it is distressing to have to write this e-mail about eddie's confrontational, ungracious behavior toward one of my guest invited to fish on our lake.

it may be that we can straighten this outwhen i return in about two weeks, I hope so, how ever to emphaxize my position, let me suggest that eddie not, fish on our pond until we do straighten this out. also, it might be a good idea for eddie not to take any of my liquor, vodka or wine,until that time I am not an Indian giver and realize that there may be some wine I had given Jackie that she should feel free to take home if she likes.

by copy of this writing to francees smith [Dorothy's sister] i am requesting she pass it along to troy eugene johnson so that he may reassure his nephew that my permission for him to fish on our lak is still in tact and he is welcome to come back.the nephew should know that his grandmother was most gracious to me over sixty years ago when i spent a weekend at their house in the Glades.

Keep well, continue your good work and enjoy life.love

uncle george

k

Best Wishes



Don't get me wrong, George isn't all bad; he has a likeable quirkiness about him. He likes the challenge of inventions and helpful gadgets. The special order pig box is right up his alley! Lise, family and friends, help him in his mission to make pig candy; a slow cooked barbecue pork delicacy. George is a collector of hobbies. He's a master of dabbler, if you will. He dives into a new endeavor and inevitably loses his enthusiasm when a new interest comes along.

Endearing and amusing, Pig Candy is a book to be slowly savored, like the succulent, slow barbecued pork. Just like southern hospitality and home cooked flavor, Pig Candy leaves you feeling warm and wanting more. The themes of mortality and race are treated with dignity and grace. Lisa's recounting of the Funderburg's layered family history will leave a legacy for generations to come. In Lise's search for her own racial identity she discovers a blurring of the lines between race and family. Growing up in a family with assorted colors myself, the one message I've learned is that love has no color. I can imagine that Lise Funderburg would agree with me wholeheartedly.

I just finished reading PIG CANDY, and know I will read it again soon. I don't think I have ever liked a book so much. I was truly amazed by its tenderness, humor, bits of anger and overall charm - what a masterpiece!

A beautiful book in content, feel, and the writing. Told honestly and with wonderful and loving humor. Loved the ending. As someone of very similar background and the same generation, I was hugely drawn in to the parallels in the family dynamics, especially father-daughter relationships. Most of all, Ms. Funderburg is an outstanding writer. Thank you for writing this!

pure and simple--- PIG CANDY is delicious. lise funderberg writes with a clear voice and an even clearer head, and who in their right mond wouldn't fall in love with her father? A remarkable book

This is a terrific memoir of a Philadelphia family with ties to the deep South. Lise Funderburg's portrayals of her father and family are heartwarming, sincere and very, very funny. I don't read this kind of book very often, but Pig Candy is the kind of book that grabs you and doesn't let go. HIGHLY recommended.

A must read. Especially for the healing professions. Medical students. More. Deserves a place in the "end of life" literature. Those who teach memoir-writing will also be inspired. First-rate family saga of a first-rate family.