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The cohost of National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" set out, through original reporting, to write a book about "the hidden conversation on race" that is going on in this country. Along the way she unearthed painful family secrets that compelled her to question her own self-understanding; she traveled extensively to explore her own complex racial legacy. Her exploration is informed by hundreds of interviews with ordinary Americans and their observations about evolving attitudes toward race in America.
User reviews
LibraryThing member JDHomrighausen
I came across this book as my girlfriend was weeding through her room. In 2011-2012 all students at Sac State (where she was) were encouraged to read it, and it was assigned for her composition class. She didn’t care for it too much. Her loss, I say.
Norris’s name might be familiar to you who
Her maternal grandma, it turned out, worked as an “Aunt Jemima” saleswoman in the ‘30s and ‘40s. Norris even managed to turn up a newspaper article about her grandma, celebrating her achievement as a representative of a major brand. Aunt Jemima was actually based on racist “slave mammy” stereotypes, evoking nostalgia of pre-Civil War days. Norris tries to dive into her grandma’s mind and make sense of the ambivalence she would have felt, using something traumatically racist for her own benefit and fortune.
She also found out that her father had been shot by a white cop as a young man. She was shocked. Her dad, the most law-abiding man she ever knew, a man who worked hard and took pride in his perfect garden and polished car – attacked a cop. This was in 1946, in Birmingham, a city later reviled during the Civil Rights era as the “most segregated city in America.” He had just returned from his armed forces tour overseas. Norris does some amazing searching to find police records from that time, and interviews some elderly people who were involved in her dad’s shooting and arrest.
But why did he never say? This is where Norris captures the “grace of silence.” Her grandma, dad, and all her other relatives scarred and traumatized by racism were not passive or too frightened to speak, she argues. Instead they chose to not dwell on the negative. But how, Norris asks, can the healing begin without any testimony? She understands the grace of silence, but prefers the catharsis of opening old wounds. Thankfully her way of writing about those wounds is clear, deftly mixing personal and political. Her conclusion – about bringing in everyone to conversations on racism, not just victims – is spot-on. A neat book.
Norris’s name might be familiar to you who
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listen to NPR. She is one of their news correspondents. In 2011 she began writing a book about Obama and what his election means for African-Americans. She wound up writing a book diving into her family history and how it intertwined with many seminal events in black history. She found out things about her maternal grandma and her father that they hid from her (and everyone else) for life.Her maternal grandma, it turned out, worked as an “Aunt Jemima” saleswoman in the ‘30s and ‘40s. Norris even managed to turn up a newspaper article about her grandma, celebrating her achievement as a representative of a major brand. Aunt Jemima was actually based on racist “slave mammy” stereotypes, evoking nostalgia of pre-Civil War days. Norris tries to dive into her grandma’s mind and make sense of the ambivalence she would have felt, using something traumatically racist for her own benefit and fortune.
She also found out that her father had been shot by a white cop as a young man. She was shocked. Her dad, the most law-abiding man she ever knew, a man who worked hard and took pride in his perfect garden and polished car – attacked a cop. This was in 1946, in Birmingham, a city later reviled during the Civil Rights era as the “most segregated city in America.” He had just returned from his armed forces tour overseas. Norris does some amazing searching to find police records from that time, and interviews some elderly people who were involved in her dad’s shooting and arrest.
But why did he never say? This is where Norris captures the “grace of silence.” Her grandma, dad, and all her other relatives scarred and traumatized by racism were not passive or too frightened to speak, she argues. Instead they chose to not dwell on the negative. But how, Norris asks, can the healing begin without any testimony? She understands the grace of silence, but prefers the catharsis of opening old wounds. Thankfully her way of writing about those wounds is clear, deftly mixing personal and political. Her conclusion – about bringing in everyone to conversations on racism, not just victims – is spot-on. A neat book.
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LibraryThing member lindap69
This is as much a history of the Civil Rights movement following the second World War as Michele tries to discover who her father was as a person after he has died and asks the questions about how society views the black man in their midst. I found myself more involved in the first half of the
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book, but wanted to see it through. Show Less
LibraryThing member debraNC
The search for the truth behind a family legend proves to locate Michelle Norris' father in the history of Civil Rights in 1948 when thousands of African-American WWII veterans came home and registered to vote.
LibraryThing member Carolee888
I have been listening to Michelle Norris on National Public Radio for so many any ears. I love her voice and delivery but I didn’t know anything about her. I thought this book would be a memoir and it is but it is also much more. I learned so much from her in her book.
Michelle Norris talks about
Michelle Norris found painful family secrets that emotionally scarred her mother and father. Both of them were directly connected the way that blacks were treated after the war. My father was white but I saw my father in hers. Her father, Belvin, was always watching out for people, caring and gentle. He was always advising his children” to keep their eyes on the prize”, to a better job than others. Like having his family get up early than the rest of the neighborhood to shovel the snow off the walks, he wanted to be better. Yet he and his brothers hid something that happened in 1946 so well that even his wife didn’t know about it.
Her mother‘s side of the family had her grandmother’s secret. No one talked about it because they thought it was embarrassing. I cannot tell that story without spoiling the book for you.
Michelle Norris writes poignantly and with insight. She described an area in the South before and after Integration and the effects of the change. I remember noticing the same changes in the inner city of Indianapolis. What went wrong? What happened?
She also talks about her father being a “block buster”. That brought a related memory. My father and I were taking a walk. I must have been eleven years old. We met a man that my father knew. He said “They are coming”. My father asked “Who?” The man said, ‘You know the Negros living in the South”. “We all have to move”. My father said ‘Why?”. That was the beginning of “white flight “in our neighborhood. With Michelle Norris‘s telling of what happened when her family moved in 1961 and my family moved in 1959 in Indianapolis. My father later told me that” We were wrong”. We moved because of fear, fear instilled by people like that man on the street.
I think that everyone needs to read this book and reflect on their own experiences growing up and farther back in their family history.
This book was received from GoodReads but that in no way influences any part of my review.
Michelle Norris talks about
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the silence that is kept in order to prevent hate and more pain in families. The impact on her family of being black in a time when it was there were so many restrictions, when you were expected to keep your expectations very low if you were black, when interracial marriages were against the law. She opens a window into the black experience. I grew up in a white neighborhood as a child. It was strange, when you are a child and you only see whites in the neighborhood and there are only whites on TV (except for the infamous ‘Amos and Andy show’, you just don’t realize that that there are black children.Michelle Norris found painful family secrets that emotionally scarred her mother and father. Both of them were directly connected the way that blacks were treated after the war. My father was white but I saw my father in hers. Her father, Belvin, was always watching out for people, caring and gentle. He was always advising his children” to keep their eyes on the prize”, to a better job than others. Like having his family get up early than the rest of the neighborhood to shovel the snow off the walks, he wanted to be better. Yet he and his brothers hid something that happened in 1946 so well that even his wife didn’t know about it.
Her mother‘s side of the family had her grandmother’s secret. No one talked about it because they thought it was embarrassing. I cannot tell that story without spoiling the book for you.
Michelle Norris writes poignantly and with insight. She described an area in the South before and after Integration and the effects of the change. I remember noticing the same changes in the inner city of Indianapolis. What went wrong? What happened?
She also talks about her father being a “block buster”. That brought a related memory. My father and I were taking a walk. I must have been eleven years old. We met a man that my father knew. He said “They are coming”. My father asked “Who?” The man said, ‘You know the Negros living in the South”. “We all have to move”. My father said ‘Why?”. That was the beginning of “white flight “in our neighborhood. With Michelle Norris‘s telling of what happened when her family moved in 1961 and my family moved in 1959 in Indianapolis. My father later told me that” We were wrong”. We moved because of fear, fear instilled by people like that man on the street.
I think that everyone needs to read this book and reflect on their own experiences growing up and farther back in their family history.
This book was received from GoodReads but that in no way influences any part of my review.
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LibraryThing member dgmlrhodes
I thought this was an informative and enjoyable read. The book reads more like a novel and has some very interesting stories about her families history. Michele Norris does a wonderful job telling the story with the right amount of detail and pacing to keep the book moving and focused.
I thought
I also found the cultural highlights to be interesting. Early on in the book, Michele highlights stories about bringing individuals from multiple races together to discuss the race issue and how none of the members of the group will address it head on.
Note: Reader received a complimentary copy from Good Reads First Reads.
I thought
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the author did a nice job of highlighting race issues in America from both today and during the time in which she grew up. In writing the book, she found stories from her family that were hidden from her such as that of her grandmother playing a part in a traveling Aunt Jemima show to demonstrate how to make pancakes. It seems that her family handled the issues through both grace and hard work. I also found the cultural highlights to be interesting. Early on in the book, Michele highlights stories about bringing individuals from multiple races together to discuss the race issue and how none of the members of the group will address it head on.
Note: Reader received a complimentary copy from Good Reads First Reads.
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LibraryThing member SAMANTHA100
Michele Norris's book, The Grace of Silence: A Family Memoir, provides insight into the lives of her remarkable family. It has been said that in order to know where one is going one has to know where they came from. Even though the author knew her family well, it is what she didn't know about them
There are reasons the author's grandmother and father didn't tell her everything and their reasons remain their own. However, the search for these reasons led to this: "There is grace in silence, and power to be had from listening to that which, more often than not, was left unsaid".
I found this to be a moving, powerful and an important book.
I received this book at no charge through Goodreads First Reads.
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that is the basic foundation of the book. After her grandmother had died, she learns that her grandmother had worked for Quaker Oats as a "traveling Aunt Jemima" during the 1940's and part of the 1950's. Norris writes "My grandmother's work created a complex legacy for her heirs". It is a legacy worth reading about. After her father's death she is told that he was shot by a white policeman after he returned home to Birmingham, Alabama after serving in WW II. Her commitment to uncovering answers to her questions about the circumstances, as well as her tenacity, is unmistakable. The quest to complete her family history is filled with meaningful and valuable experiences. Research shows her father's history is intertwined with the events in Birmingham during the same period. Birmingham's history is well documented and the facts are appalling. Norris attention to detail is evident in every page.There are reasons the author's grandmother and father didn't tell her everything and their reasons remain their own. However, the search for these reasons led to this: "There is grace in silence, and power to be had from listening to that which, more often than not, was left unsaid".
I found this to be a moving, powerful and an important book.
I received this book at no charge through Goodreads First Reads.
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LibraryThing member Dottiehaase
A memoir by the co-host of National Public Radio’s flagship program All Things Considered. While exploring the hidden conversation on race unfolding throughout America in the wake of President Obama’s election, Michele Norris discovered that there were some secrets within her own family that
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had been withheld. These revelations—from her father’s shooting by a Birmingham police officer to her maternal grandmother’s job as an itinerant Aunt Jemima in the Midwest—inspired a bracing journey into her family’s past, from her childhood home in Minneapolis to her ancestral roots in the Deep South. Norris, born and raised in Minnesota, tells stories of her parents integrating an all-white neighborhood, which in turn, drove away many of the families who didn't want to live with a Black family. Her parents insistence that the children in the family always act in a certain very correct way outside as to avoid any stereotypes.Her parents divorced and she lived with her father, but both parents provided a lot of parenting for her. Show Less
LibraryThing member herdingcats
Michelle Norris tells two stories in this book. One is the story of her family. The tale of how her father had been shot by a Birmingham policeman and her investigation to learn more about that incident forms the backbone of much of the story. The other story is that of segregation in the south and
I found it very interesting and I learned things that I did not know.
I got this book free as a goodreads review book and I highly recommend it.
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what life was for black people - at least for her family and others like them, and what it was like for white people living in the south during that time. I found it very interesting and I learned things that I did not know.
I got this book free as a goodreads review book and I highly recommend it.
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LibraryThing member bfister
About the journalist's parents who integrated a Minneapolis neighborhood and about her discovery that her father had been shot by a policeman after he returned from World War II, an injustice he had kept silent about. The question you're left with is whether his silence is a kind of grace or not.
LibraryThing member walkonmyearth
The Grace of Silence: a memoir
By Michele Norris
Assaults against us can take us down emotionally or physically. If we are assaulted because of who we are as a person, we might become openly aggressively defiant or develop a defiant spirit that becomes a stalwart fortress against any such future
Pride, inner strength are only some of what Michele Norris uncovered about her father, Belvin Norris, as she searched for the secret and its story, long held by her father and his brothers. While some may have shaken off the original incident as one of many occurrences in a time rife with Jim Crow laws, and a government that promised a dream fulfilled to all who enlisted, but relegated African American servicemen to the kitchens instead of the cockpits or other places of promotion.
I was pleasantly surprised with this memoir. It focused beautifully on her father and held me to the pages. Michele didn’t learn everything she wanted to know – too many people had died and too much time had passed. Some of her answers were to the little things, like the unusual gait her father exhibited. Some were of a larger scale – how he came to be the proud, caring person and parent in a world that so often fought against his rights as a human, a serviceman, and a citizen. sh 2/16/2011
By Michele Norris
Assaults against us can take us down emotionally or physically. If we are assaulted because of who we are as a person, we might become openly aggressively defiant or develop a defiant spirit that becomes a stalwart fortress against any such future
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attacks.Pride, inner strength are only some of what Michele Norris uncovered about her father, Belvin Norris, as she searched for the secret and its story, long held by her father and his brothers. While some may have shaken off the original incident as one of many occurrences in a time rife with Jim Crow laws, and a government that promised a dream fulfilled to all who enlisted, but relegated African American servicemen to the kitchens instead of the cockpits or other places of promotion.
I was pleasantly surprised with this memoir. It focused beautifully on her father and held me to the pages. Michele didn’t learn everything she wanted to know – too many people had died and too much time had passed. Some of her answers were to the little things, like the unusual gait her father exhibited. Some were of a larger scale – how he came to be the proud, caring person and parent in a world that so often fought against his rights as a human, a serviceman, and a citizen. sh 2/16/2011
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LibraryThing member olevia
Not as happy as I wanted to be about the book. In some respects, it felt like a very extended NPR essay. The author seemed nearly detached from her own subjects, which is not what she likely intended. That said, her father was especially brought to vivid life here.
LibraryThing member fefferbooks
I'm a little let down by this one. I picked this book up because I saw the author on the Today Show, and was fascinated by the concept of the book--Norris says she "set out to write, through original reporting, a book about 'the hidden conversation' on race that is unfolding nationwide. She would,
Sounds really interesting, right? And, well, the stories she tells are interesting. But I guess I feel let down that she never really discusses how she is affected by that. Does that newly discovered history change her feelings about racial relations? Does it change...anything? She never really relates any of it to herself. She just shares the stories, guesses at her family members' motivations for hiding them, and then moves on.
Furthermore, I really would have enjoyed it if she'd written a bit about her intended subject. Once given the background we have about her family, it would have been far more meaningful to read her thoughts on the hidden conversation on race in the social and political climate today.
The book's OK. Norris is a good storyteller, but not a great writer--things are strung together a big oddly, and chapters end in abrupt places. Honestly, it felt like she could have covered her material far more concisely and efficiently--I kept wondering why we were reviewing certain chunks again and again. It just felt really disorganized. But I also thought it was worth sticking with it. 2.5 stars.
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she thought, base her book on the frank disclosures of others on the subject, but she was soon disabused of her presumption when forced to confront the fact that 'the conversation' in her own family had not been forthright."Sounds really interesting, right? And, well, the stories she tells are interesting. But I guess I feel let down that she never really discusses how she is affected by that. Does that newly discovered history change her feelings about racial relations? Does it change...anything? She never really relates any of it to herself. She just shares the stories, guesses at her family members' motivations for hiding them, and then moves on.
Furthermore, I really would have enjoyed it if she'd written a bit about her intended subject. Once given the background we have about her family, it would have been far more meaningful to read her thoughts on the hidden conversation on race in the social and political climate today.
The book's OK. Norris is a good storyteller, but not a great writer--things are strung together a big oddly, and chapters end in abrupt places. Honestly, it felt like she could have covered her material far more concisely and efficiently--I kept wondering why we were reviewing certain chunks again and again. It just felt really disorganized. But I also thought it was worth sticking with it. 2.5 stars.
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LibraryThing member jwood652
This memoir by Michele Norris, cohost of NPR's All Things Considered, delivers an informative, compelling view of race relations in the US. In uncovering long hidden instances from her family's past including her father being shot by a policeman and her Grandmother traveling around making pancakes
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as Aunt Jemima, she explores racism past and present. The book is thoughtful, informative and well researched. The ongoing struggle is also illuminated by examples from our nation's history. In addition to enjoying a well written memoir, I have gained more specific insights than available from my privileged white male perspective. Show Less
LibraryThing member jwood652
This memoir by Michele Norris, cohost of NPR's All Things Considered, delivers an informative, compelling view of race relations in the US. In uncovering long hidden instances from her family's past including her father being shot by a policeman and her Grandmother traveling around making pancakes
Show More
as Aunt Jemima, she explores racism past and present. The book is thoughtful, informative and well researched. The ongoing struggle is also illuminated by examples from our nation's history. In addition to enjoying a well written memoir, I have gained more specific insights than available from my privileged white male perspective. Show Less
LibraryThing member Rascalstar
Wow. Every American should read this book. It's so much more than it appears to be on first look. The reader expects a family memoir, and that is provided along with crucial and little-known American history. This book contains so much elegant wisdom, eloquently told. Further, it asks us to do
I've been listening to Michele Norris on NPR for years without knowing anything about her. You won't find much that's current about her and her work in this book, but you can find that online. What you'll find are precious gems for living well.
All that said, this book will be loved by mature readers. Immature readers or those who don't accept responsibity nor have an appreciation of the give and take of all kinds of communities, including family, won't get it. But then, I don't think Michele was writing for those audiences.
She has a remarkable family, full of grace, and they're still passing it down through generations. Oh that we all possessed such grace! Don't miss a word of this book. It's the sort I'll read again and give as gifts.
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more, to be more, to understand more. I've been listening to Michele Norris on NPR for years without knowing anything about her. You won't find much that's current about her and her work in this book, but you can find that online. What you'll find are precious gems for living well.
All that said, this book will be loved by mature readers. Immature readers or those who don't accept responsibity nor have an appreciation of the give and take of all kinds of communities, including family, won't get it. But then, I don't think Michele was writing for those audiences.
She has a remarkable family, full of grace, and they're still passing it down through generations. Oh that we all possessed such grace! Don't miss a word of this book. It's the sort I'll read again and give as gifts.
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LibraryThing member nmele
Michele Norris's exploration of her family history is a stunning tale of systemic racial injustice, thoroughly researched and reported, but it also raises questions about all family's and their histories: who conceals what facts, and why. Certainly, her book spoke to me not only about her family
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but about my own immigrant grandparents, whose stories are only partially known. Who decides what will be passed on and what will be hidden? Norris discusses these questions and they have been with me since finishing "The Grace of Silence". Show Less
LibraryThing member lgaikwad
Michele Norris began the journey of discovering her own family experiences as a means to find a way into discussion of race. She felt an unprecedented openness for conversation, yet authentic conversation never really happened with participants still carefully walking around the subject. She
She ends her epilogue with encouragement to ask our own families to "tell me more about yourself." "There is grace in silence, and power to be had from listening to that which, more often than not, was left unsaid."
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attempted conversation in her own family, only to find the same experience. And so her journey began. Her story is well written with her questions, quandaries, insights, and emotions unfolding as they occurred for her. I particularly liked that she couched her journey as a search into the roles of silence and voice.She ends her epilogue with encouragement to ask our own families to "tell me more about yourself." "There is grace in silence, and power to be had from listening to that which, more often than not, was left unsaid."
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LibraryThing member mojomomma
I picked this up because I heard Ms. Norris speak at a conference I attended. In this book, she tracks down her family's secret stories that shaped who they were and how segregation in America shaped her whole family. Her father's story is particularly poignant.
ISBN
0307475271 / 9780307475275