Judy's Pick

I'm Down by Mishna Wolff. St. Martin's Press, 2009.

Ok, so I like non-fiction, I'm especially attracted to memoirs and at the end of the day, I love to laugh. Mishna Wolff made me laugh. She grew up to be a fashion model and a comedian, how's that for a combination. White Mishna and her sister grew up in a black neighborhood with a divorced father who was enamored of all things culturally black as well as women of color who were to be step-mothers/mentors to the girls. She says he wanted to be black and wanted to see his girls adopt the genuine and positive aspects of black Americans, their "downness." Wise beyond her years, Mishna takes advantage of the opportunities she's afforded when her mother enrolls her in a highly competitive school outside of her neighborhood, where she realizes the difficulty of trying to fit into both worlds at once. The book is look at life in our strangely integrated, strangely segregated culture, beyond stereotype and in the end it is the story of a loving, if somewhat wacky family.