Coming of Age in Mississippi
Book description
The unforgettable memoir of a woman at the front lines of the civil rights movement—a harrowing account of black life in the rural South and a powerful affirmation of one person’s ability to affect change.
“Anne Moody’s autobiography is an eloquent, moving testimonial to her courage.”—Chicago Tribune
Born to a…
Why read it?
3 authors picked Coming of Age in Mississippi as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
I almost chose a fifth book by an author more readers will likely have heard of (Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower), but I’m going with a second autobiography, Anne Moody’s, Coming of Age in Mississippi.
Between ages 13 and 16, I read my blue paperback cover of this book more times than I can remember. It’s about Anne Moody’s growing up amid poverty and Jim Crow, beset by sexism and danger from within and outside her community due to her gender and race.
It chronicles her childhood in Mississippi to her evolution into a Civil Rights Activist as…
From Stephane's list on Black girl coming of age everybody should read.
This book brings home the racism that constricted a young Black woman’s life in rural Mississippi in the 1940s and 1950s. Smart and hardworking, Moody at first can only find menial jobs in white households. When she finally finds a way to go to college, she gets involved in the Civil Rights movement to push back against all the wrongs done to her. Her personal journey brings home the extent of reforms needed during Civil Rights – not just voting and seats on the bus, but systemic changes that would bring racial equality to all facets of life.
From Clara's list on memoirs from the front lines of standing up to racism.
Moody’s wrenching account of growing up black and desperately poor in rural 1950s Mississippi reveals the ways in which the Jim Crow system undermined the stability of black families, deprived them of decent housing and education, and trapped them in generational poverty. She reveals the grinding destitution of sharecropping life and the daily indignities whites inflicted on blacks, even small children. An inquisitive and intelligent girl, Moody was determined to go to college, a feat she achieved thanks to a basketball scholarship.
At Tougaloo College, she became deeply involved in the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee’s fight to bring integrated facilities…
From Melissa's list on first-person accounts of twentieth century South.
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