Post #93 – Women’s Memoirs, Book & Video Raves – Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler
To honor and acknowledge Black History Month, we’re pleased to publish Diana Yoshikawa Paul’s review of Grace of Silence by Michele Norris.
The Power of Words
By Diana Paul
There is sometimes grace in silence. But there is always power in words…and in history. Few biographies or memoirs have touched me as deeply as The Grace of Silence: A Family Memoir (Vintage)
Her memoir will relate to everyone, especially:
1) Those of us wanting to better understand the horrors and degradation of black Americans’ lives throughout the country, not just southern states;
2) Readers who continue to be amazed at the success of those who have had to struggle heroically against the greatest of odds; and
3) All who need to be reminded that we all have secrets we keep from ourselves as well as others.
Michele Norris informs us of her inspiration to write when “post-racial” America was declared, because Barack Obama had been elected president.
“All the talk of a post-racial America betrays an all too glib eagerness to put in remission a four-hundred-year-old cancerous social disease. We can’t let it rest until we attend to its symptoms in ourselves and others.” p.168
With the initial intent to open a no-holds-barred conversation on race in the US, Norris’ narrative begins with a chapter about her beloved father, Belvin Norris, who has been hospitalized for a stroke. After her father’s death, we are catapulted into her parents’ heroic lives, a couple who abandoned their own dreams for a downpayment on their children’s future, keeping secrets locked inside.
The story of Belvin and Betty Norris is a story of unbelievable, almost unbearable pain. The author almost immediately realizes how little she has really known about them.
“There is grace in silence, and power to be had from listening to that which, more often than not, was left unsaid.”
Michele’s “Daddy” is a conundrum.
“Kindness is usually seen as altruistic. But it can also be an act of desperation, satisfying a deep-seated need to avoid the mind’s darker places. Benevolence, for some, is a survival tactic.”
And with that understanding, she begins the journey to discovering her father’s secrets masked by his kindness and benevolence. Norris finds herself imagining the corrosiveness of racism. She also, as a middle-aged woman, begins to comprehend the “psychological terrorism of the Jim Crow system” her grandparents and parents suffered in the late 1940s through 1960s. Their very natures and personalities were irreversibly altered.
Although many eloquent stories of the outrageous behavior of whites towards blacks have been narrated by the genius of writers like Maya Angelou,The Grace of Silence: A Family Memoir (Vintage)
Michele Norris’ details of her parents’ determination is unsparing. They would raise their daughter with self-confidence, with dreams that could still come true in a racist society, and without anger or hatred for whites. Their story is remarkable for its bravery, honesty, and integrity. As Michele Norris poignantly notes, “you can’t keep your eye on the prize if your sight is clouded by tears.”
[Kindle Version]
There are also some disturbing, if not shocking, comparisons as well. Only the most generous of souls could make them. One example: while interviewing a white policeman who was on duty during the civil right’s unrest in Birmingham when the 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed, Michele makes a comparison between the policeman and her own beloved father. I had to read that paragraph three times to comprehend what I had just read! You must read it yourself to grasp how searing the pain in understanding her parents and how she soars simultaneously with the release from the secrets of her family’s past!
