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"A self-taught artist's odyssey from Jim Crow era Georgia to the Yale Art Gallery--a stunningly vivid, full-color memoir in prose and painted leather, with a foreword by Equal Justice Initiative founder Bryan Stevenson. Winfred Rembert grew up as a field hand on a Georgia plantation. He embraced the Civil Rights Movement, endured political violence, survived a lynching, and spent seven years in prison on a chain gang. Years later, seeking a fresh start at the age of 52, he discovered his gift and vision as an artist, and using leather tooling skills he learned in prison, started etching and painting scenes from his youth. Rembert's work has been exhibited at museums and galleries across the country, profiled in the New York Times and more, and honored by Bryan Stevenson's Equal Justice Initiative. In Chasing Me to My Grave, he relates his life in prose and paintings--vivid, confrontational, revelatory, complex scenes from the cotton fields and chain gangs of the segregated south to the churches and night clubs of the urban north. This is also the story of finding epic love, and with it the courage to revisit a past that begs to remain buried, as told to Tufts philosopher Erin I. Kelly"--… (more)
User reviews
This harrowing but moving memoir, which won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 2022, deserves the many honors that it has received. It features full-color reproductions of Rembert's leatherwork along with glimpses into the often-overlooked lives of Blacks in the Deep South during the oppressive Jim Crow era. Bryan Stevenson's thoughtful introduction is also not to be missed. Highly recommended.
In both its brevity and its presentation, it's hard not to think of Fredrick Douglas or Harriet Jacobs. Like those predecessors, Rembert's memoir is both a political act and a time capsule worthy of