Product Details
Touchstone, January 2009
eBook, 352 pages
ISBN-10: 1416594493
ISBN-13: 9781416594499
Read an Excerpt
Chapter 1
Description
A powerful, beautifully written memoir about coming of age as a black girl in an exclusive white suburb in "integrated," post-Civil Rights California in the 1970s and 1980s.
At six years of age, after winning a foot race against a white classmate, Jennifer Baszile was humiliated to hear her classmate explain that black people "have something in their feet to make them run faster than white people." When she asked her teacher about it, it was confirmed as true. The next morning, Jennifer's father accompanied her to school, careful to "assert himself as an informed and concerned parent and not simply a big, black, dangerous man in a first-grade classroom."
This was the first of many skirmishes in Jennifer's childhood-long struggle to define herself as "the black girl next door" while living out her parents' dreams. Success for her was being the smartest and achieving the most, with the consequence that much of her girlhood did not seem like her own but more like the "family project." But integration took a toll on everyone in the family when strain in her parents' marriage emerged in her teenage years, and the struggle to be the perfect black family became an unbearable burden.
A deeply personal view of a significant period of American social history, The Black Girl Next Door deftly balances childhood experiences with adult observations, creating an illuminating and poignant look at a unique time in our country's history.
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4. Jennifer Baszile: Muse00:3127791799001 -
5. Jennifer Baszile: Inspiration00:3027780642001
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"The Black Girl Next Door stands out...forthright and courage[ous]."
-- Los Angeles Times
"...provocative and gripping..."
-- New York Times
San Francisco Chronicle, April 8, 2009
...'Do black people have something in their feet to make them run faster?' Six-year-old Jennifer Baszile asks her older sister the question after Jennifer's best friend, Tammy, makes the accusation when losing a footrace. Tammy insists it's ...
Daily Breeze, March 8, 2009
...Jennifer Baszile's story isn't about hardship in the usual sense, growing up as she did in Rancho Palos Verdes with a socially conscious mother and self-made dad whose metalworks ...
Hartford Courant, February 26, 2009
...s 'Lift Every Voice' (Rowman & Littlefield, $34.95) follows his earlier book, 'Jazz in American Culture.' 'The Black Girl Next Door'The author of a memoir about what it was like to be a black student in the first wave of desegregated schools ...
Our Weekly, February 12, 2009
...that, too, and your kids will say the same thing to their kids. In the new book ?The Black Girl Next Door? (c.2009, Touchstone, $25.00 / $28.99 Canada, 310 pages) by Jennifer Baszile, you?ll read one woman?s coming-of-age story about coming ...
Our Weekly, February 7, 2009
...that, too, and your kids will say the same thing to their kids. In the new book ?The Black Girl Next Door? (c.2009, Touchstone, $25.00 / $28.99 Canada, 310 pages) by Jennifer Baszile, you?ll read one woman?s coming-of-age story about coming ...
Book Reporter, January 23, 2009
...Jennifer Baszile's mother and father didn't grow up having everything, but, like most parents do, they worked to make sure their children would. As soon as they could, they ...
Our Weekly, January 22, 2009
...that, too, and your kids will say the same thing to their kids. In the new book ?The Black Girl Next Door? (c.2009, Touchstone, $25.00 / $28.99 Canada, 310 pages) by Jennifer Baszile, you?ll read one woman?s coming-of-age story about coming ...
Capital City Weekly, January 21, 2009
...'The Black Girl Next Door' by Jennifer Baszile. 2009, Touchstone. $25 hardcover, 310 pages. If you're a parent, you know what you'll do for your children. Everything. You'll work ...
New Pittsburgh Courier, January 17, 2009
... Terri Schlichenmeyer Cover To Cover...The Black girl next door If you?re a parent, you know what you?ll do for your children. Everything. You?ll work seven days a week to ensure they get what ...
International Herald Tribune, January 11, 2009
...The Black Girl Next Door A Memoir By Jennifer Baszile 310 pages. Touchstone Books. $25. Jennifer Baszile grew up in Palos Verdes Estates, an elite and nearly all-white suburb of Los Angeles ...
