Customer Reviews

The Sweeter the Juice: A Family Memoir in Black and White

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I enjoyed this book from cover to cover. Sure, some of it was confusing, like some said, but what part of genealogy isn't confusing? My own genealogy confuses ME! :o) This book was wonderful! I think the author did a wonderful job in addressing this little spoken of topic. I was recommended this book after I found out that my family had African American roots, & so this book hit home with me. It aided me through an emotional journey...answering many of the questions such as: "Why so many secrets?" It also helped me to understand that some of my family members will never in their lifetimes will willing to openly talk about this subject, but the book confirmed my feelings that it's their loss. Thanks & kudos to the author!!!

I just read this book. It was very moving and insightful. It was so sad that Margaret Taylor, Shirlee's mother, was abandoned by her father,sister and brothers, and endured such a difficult childhood. It took over 70 years for Margaret to find her sister!

I think that Grace Cramer's life was more tragic, perhaps, because she blocked out so many memories and isolated herself. I would think she could have at least written her sister, once in 70 years! even if she was nervous about revealing her heritage to other people. It was wonderful to hear that Grace's grandchildren had a happy meeting with Shirlee.
The photos are great and the stories about the Taylors, Morrisses etc. are inspiring. It was fascinating to read about African American life in New England and the South. I look forward to reading the book about the Haizlip marriage.

The author, Shirlee Taylor Haizlip, is of mixed race parentage, her father more dark skinned black than her mother. Her mother, the youngest of her family, was abandoned by her brothers and sisters and her father, a mulatto, her mulato mother having died. Most of her surving relatives (those of Mrs. Haizlip's mother) moved away to other places and passed for white. The last child of the family, she was a painful reminder to them of the black experience they inherited. This abandonment happened around 1916. She passed into several gaurdianships and then ended up in the home of a light skinned couple, a dentist and lady who was slowly loosing her sanity. Her female gaurdian spent most of her time covering her furniture with white sheets,pulling down the blinds of the house and running around in rags. Her mother eventually met Julian, a part white and part Indian, a divorcee son of a prominent black minister. They married and Julian Jr. settled in as a pastor to the small black community in the working class town of Ansonia Connecticut.

In the pictures provided in the book, Margaret and her mother look rather Mediteranian. Margaret and Julian their three children, plus some foster children, lived an exceedingly happy middle class lifelife. There were summer homes to vacation, pleasant trips to Baptist national conventions, regular shopping trips, a vibrant social life, guests at home from NAACP leaders to Jackie Robinson. Racial problems were a little part of their life in this community. The children, except for the only sun Julian Jr. nicknamed "Brother," one of the few problems in their lives, were very successful in school,full of extra-curricular activities, camping, clubs, and so on.

Not exactly the life of the average black family in the 1940's. The author would marry a gentleman named Harold Haizlipp, attend Ivy league schools. They were amongst the elite of New York, sitting on a bunch of trustee boards, knowing all the famous intellectuals, and it was in such genteel circles that she and her husband conducted activism against racism. One interesting incident was a party thrown by the Haizlips in apparently the late 60's in New York. Attendees included Betty Shabaz, widow of Malcom X and a daughter of Nelson Rockefeller. A white woman, apparently some sort of civil rights worker, was brought along with one of Shirlee's friends. She apparently was so overcome by the interracial socilization going on, in addition to the nature of the party which called for guests to wear costumes revealing as much skin as possible (inspired by the play "Hairspray). The woman gripped around Harold's Cousin tightly and started screaming that the black males there wished to rape her before she was subdued and taken to a mental hospital.

Harold was commissioner of education in the Virgin Islands from 1971 to 1980. Shirlee had to fret about things like worrying about wearing the same dress as Queen Elizabeth when she met the latter. She became manager of the local CBS affiliate on the island and tried to make its programing reflect the interests of the natives. When she returned to the U.S., she became a director until 1986 at New York Public Television station WNET and had a few unpleasant racial situations there. She moved on to be the director of the National Center for Film and Video preservation at the American film institute and she found quickly found herself out of place in this organization which declared "Birth of a Nation" to be one of America's greatest film treasures. She didn't last long there. She expresses a great deal of disillusionment with race relations in this country.

The author towards the end of the book (set in the early 90's) helps her mother seek out her "white" relatives and there is mostly happy reunions. The interaction with Shirlee's Aunt Grace is particularly interesting. That lady was apparently quite sincere when she said she had no memory of her early life of things that related to the "black" part of her life. She had blocked it all out. Grace also is quoted bring up the issue more than once of her Spanish translator grandaughter going out with Hispanic men. She says "what's wrong with a good white man" and that her grandaughter's boyfriend is "dark--like a black man."

This book, except for the first part which is somewhat stiffly writen-- where the author laboriously describes, her ancestors, their physical features, their houses, personalities and so on--is a first rate piece of writing. The author has lived an exceedingly romantic life, one with lots of family love, friends and activity. ...

I had to read the book for my College English class and I thorouhly enjoyed it. Its a must read if you really want to get into the old American structure of Racism and Discrimination. The book tells us something that we can never get out of History textbooks. Its truly a moving true story. I loved it.

The Sweeter the Juice clearly demonstrates that racism is equally prevelent on both sides of the color line. While Haizlip's book is well written, the author is no less guilty of racism towards white people than the WASPs she condemns. Her comments about whites and "poor white trash" in particular are uncalled for (i.e. "my mother said there is nothing worse than poor white trash" and "a nice white person is nothing more than that. A nice white person"). As the descendant of working class Southern whites I was personally offended by her assumptions about my ancestors. In fact, my father rose out of Southern poverty and all of the associated racial biases of his family.

When a white person does something gracious for Haizlip, she overlooks it and portrays it as a negative event. For instance, when Martin Luther King is shot and Haizlip's white neighbor comes by to make her tea and offer her sympathies, the author says "she said that assuming she knew how I felt." While Haizlip's ambivalence towards whites is understandable given some of her experiences, she makes just as many stereotypes about whites as they do of her. She claims to be an integrationist, but part of the reason American society is not socially integated today, is the self segregation of blacks and mixed race people like Haizlip.

Haizlip is contradictory at times. As a New Negro like her mother, she is "eager to please" and be accepted by white culture, but at the same time, she resents her caucasian heritage and is active in African American social circles. This book seems to be more about the author's insecurities about her racial identity than about bringing familes together.

After meeting her white relatives, Haizlip creates a "white corner" to keep their photographs separate from the rest of her family. She says she wonders if they would have ever bothered to find her. This seems a bit ridiculous since it is the grandson of her aunt Grace who takes the initiative to locate Haizlip and unite the families along with her. Again, Haizlip cannot accept as legitimate any positive actions on the part of whites. Haizlip tells her daughter that she keeps the white family's photos separate from the others because it wouldn't be honest to do otherwise. Haizlip explains that she will never be able to connect with her white relatives because their lives are too different from hers- they passed for white and she didn't. So does this mean that Haizlip cannot have anything in common/be friends with any white person? And she's the one who worked so hard to locate her mother's sister to begin with. Without meaning to, Haizlip is passing down her own anger towards white people to her daughters, potentially preventing them from forming bi-racial friendships with whites who are color blind would not reject them the way Haizlip's mother's relatives rejected her.

The saddest part of this book is that towards the end, Haizlip does not accept her new-found white relatives the same way they accept her. She keeps their pictures and their lives as separate, but equal (to quote a Jim Crow phrase) as possible.

In order to make herself feel part of "Us" instead of "Them," Haizlip turns poor whites into the "Them." This is not how we will solve today's racial problems. Racism will only be solved if everyone becomes part of "Us."

Since I saw you on Oprah several years ago, I have been wanting to thank you for making this unparalleled contribution to our nation's history and literature. Books like yours will free us from racism, because they tell the truth despite generations of lies. I read Sweeter the Juice when I was in the 8th grade and it really shows me just how ridiculous this black-white-gray-beige thing is in our country. This book shows what a horrible society we are in when we force families to draw racial dividing lines on their love for their children and grandchildren. Your mother is an amazing human being to have endured so much rejection and loneliness as a child and then to put that all aside, and provide a loving home for you and your siblings.

Although the pictures of my faded brown ancestors look very much like your family's, I was raised in a family that has always acknowledged their African heritage. I have heard stories of distant uncles that have passed in order to ge! t jobs, but they returned to their black wives when they came home. This book shows me how fortunate I am that my grandparents didn't use the "benefit" of their blue, green, and hazel eyes to escape their true ethnicity. I have been raised in a family that has always taken great pride in being the first black people to accomplish something in their field of expertise. They enjoy the struggle, because it has always meant that with merely the power of their life, they have dismantled the system and created enough leverage for other blacks to persevere.

Your book is so great because it gets people to think of themselves and their ancestry in a more three dimensional way. It stops people from only claiming the ancestors that they most resemble. It makes people appreciate all of the million of lives that had to exist in order for them to simply be born. When I came from reading the book I didn't feel like I wanted to be color blind, but rather appreciative that I live! d and was a product of so many different cultures.

The p! art that I love is when you talk about how something like 95% ( I forgot the exact figure), of white Americans have black ancestry. That is one statistic I have been quoting ever since I read that page. And you should see how many of my white listeners seem to be praying they are apart of that remaining 5%. I rarely put this book down.

Thank you again for your years of research for this book. You have helped to enlighten countless individuals and families not to mention the nation.

This moving account of six generations of family history goes beyond the usual personal family narrative. The author explores her family's heritage as slaves and free blacks and whites since the Civil War era. She explores the motivations of those members of her mixed-race family who have chosen to remain black and those who have crossed over to become white. By separating issues of skin color and racial identity, Haizlip explores the concept of race as a social construct and shows that, in some instances, one's racial identity can be a matter of personal choice. The family trees and photographs that accompany this account add to the fascination of the story

I am not an Oprah fan but one day with nothing to do I actually spent a rare session in front of television flipping channels. And I found myself stopping at her channel at her show's beginning wondering What is it This time?

The author of this book and her mother were there to discuss this book and her family saga as well as the Issue of 'Passing'.

I found their discussion so facinating that next day I went straight to the book store and ordered this book. Later I would buy other books on the subject.

Not wishing to be 'controversial' I must confess that the book was quite fasinating and I did enjoy reading it.

I really enjoyed reading "The Sweeter the Juice." Ms. Haizlip's story of her mother's family passing for white was fascinating and disturbing all at once. I could never imagaine denying myself and my own family in order to be accepted by the white world. I am glad that in the end that family came back together. And that her cousins that had no knowledge of their own Black ancestry were so accepting of it. Blood really is thicker than water....

In the United States, people are often judged by their skin color. Shirley Haizlip's book reveals the complexity of the issue by searching for her family's roots. She discovered that she had African, European, and Native American ancestors. Perhaps most interesting was the fact that many of her "black" relatives chose to pass into the dominant "white" society. This book will make you wonder about your own ancestry, and perhaps make you reconsider what race means in modern America. I have purchased copies for several people, and their response has been "What an interesting and exciting book!"