Pieces from Life's Crazy Quilt

by Arnett, Marvin V.

• ISBN13: 9780803210646
• ISBN10: 0803210647
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-04-01
• Publisher: Univ of Nebraska Pr

Summary

Part memoir and part urban social history, Pieces from Life's Crazy Quilt is an African American woman's personal account of her life during a racially turbulent period in a northern American city. Raised in a black neighborhood in urban Detroit, Marvin V. Arnett begins her book with her birth during the Great Depression, and ends with the infamous Detroit race riot of 1943. Arnett's close observations and attention to the details of her neighborhood and the complex adult relationships around her make this an understated yet powerful story of witness. Like the idiosyncratic pieces of a crazy quilt, each chapter functions alone but takes on particular resonance when considered with the whole. Choreographed as one-act plays, each chapter invites the reader into the life of the Sprague family and their neighbors during the years after the Ford Motor Company closed their Detroit plants. Arnett tells the story of her childhood with subversive allusions to the Victorian-era coming-of-age stories she consumed while growing up and the moral lessons she absorbed in such readings but could not reconcile with her own experience. Marvin V. Arnett is a retired manager who worked in the federal service for more than twenty-five years and is a former vicepresident of the National Organization of Blacks in Government. She lives in Southfield, Michigan, where she lectures and tutors.

Author Biography

Marvin V. Arnett is a retired manager who worked in the federal service for more than twenty-five years and is a former vice president of the National Organization of Blacks in Government. Arnett is a member of The Society of Midland Authors. She lives in Southfield, Michigan, where she lectures and tutors.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Prologue	1	(2)
My Mother's Quilts	3	(4)
In My Father's House	7	(6)
The Jewel in the Crown	13	(6)
After the Fall	19	(6)
The Good Reverend	25	(6)
My Father vs. the Church of the True Believers	31	(8)
Take from No Bird Her Song	39	(4)
The Boys of Summer	43	(6)
To Thine Own Self Be True	49	(6)
Miss Lila's Place	55	(8)
My Brother and the Katzenjammer Kids	63	(6)
What's in a Name?	69	(8)
The Race Man	77	(6)
Dick Tracy's Not Your Friend	83	(6)
The Memorial	89	(6)
Not by Bread Alone	95	(4)
1300 Beaubien	99	(6)
Too Much of a Good Thing	105	(6)
The Red-and-Black Chinchilla Coat	111	(6)
When Your Gods Have Feet of Clay	117	(6)
The Great Feet Washings	123	(4)
The Vote	127	(4)
Sophisticated Lady	131	(6)
Greater Love Has No Man	137	(6)
The Color of Color	143	(4)
Mister Sandman	147	(6)
That Lying Wonder	153	(6)
All Things Relative	159	(6)
The Gathering Storm	165	(4)
A New Day	169	(6)
Epilogue	175