Let Us Now Praise Famous Women
A Memoir
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- 14,99 €
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- 14,99 €
Description de l’éditeur
An affectionate, humorous account of small town Alabama during the civil rights era.
When Frank Sikora’s six-year-old daughter contracted pneumonia in 1962, his wife Millie vowed that would be the last winter she would spend in Ohio. Despite their misgivings about the racial tensions erupting there, they moved their family of six south, where Frank hoped to fulfill his dream of becoming a newspaper reporter. But when those dreams didn’t materialize immediately, mounting bills, repossession, and eviction forced them to move in with Millie’s parents, Dan and Minnie Belle Helms, in rural Wellington, Alabama.
With even slimmer prospects for employment in impoverished Calhoun County, the Sikoras came to depend heavily upon the Helmses and extended family members and all their lives became closely intertwined. The Helmses were uneducated, unpolished people, but Sikora’s narration of his life with them—often humorous but never condescending—provides a compelling portrait of the attitudes and lifestyle of poor whites in Alabama during the second half of the 20th century, just as James Agee’s monumental work, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, illuminated the Depression years in Hale County, Alabama. Sikora illustrates how resourceful, southern women, in particular, held their families together through trying times.
Interwoven with this commentary on rural white culture in the Deep South is the story of Sikora’s developing career as a newsman. Determined to succeed, he finally lands a job with the Gadsden Times reporting the news of black citizens. From that introduction to journalism, Sikora becomes one of Alabama’s most acclaimed chroniclers of the civil rights movement, eventually writing some of the acknowledged masterpieces about the subject. Like his landmark book, Selma, Lord, Selma, Sikora’s newest work tells the stories of ordinary Alabamians and their perspectives on extraordinary times.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In a nod toward James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, which described how the Depression affected Alabama, journalist Sikora gives an account of poverty and race in the state during the turbulent mid-1960s. As if he were telling the tale from a porch swing, Sikora takes his time, weaving together personal history, jokes and political thought as he ambles through the difficult lives of some resilient people. An Ohio native, Sikora moved South when his Alabama-born wife, Millie, tired of cold weather and the constant sickness of their four children. After a run of bad financial luck, the family moved into Millie's parents' ramshackle house. Although Sikora occasionally attempts to tackle larger issues, like how rural Alabama residents dealt with civil rights, he excels most at describing the languid pace of an impoverished family. With no money for entertainment, he and his in-laws spent a great deal of time simply talking while throwing rocks at trees. Sikora's respect for the family's women is also apparent he often marvels at their resourcefulness in stretching a dollar although he has difficulty warming up to his ornery, angry mother-in-law. The portrait he draws of '60s smalltown life in the South is affectionate while remaining realistic about bigotry and exclusion, and gives a valuable glimpse of one family's experience during a momentous decade.
