Full name: I'm Down: A Memoir

Author: Mishna Wolff Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: Memoirs, Non Fiction, Humor Purchase/reserch links: LibraryThing Goodreads Amazon ISBNs: 9780312378554 9780312379094 0312378556 0312379099

Mishna Wolff grew up in a poor black neighborhood with her single father, a white man who truly believed he was black.  "He strutted around with a short perm, a Cosby-esqe sweater, gold chains and a Kangol--telling jokes like Redd Fox, and giving advice like Jesse Jackson.  You couldn't tell my father he was white.  Believe me, I tried," writes Wolff.  And so from early childhood on, her father began his crusade to make his white daughter Down.  Unfortunately, Mishna didn't quite fit in with the neighborhood kids: she couldn't dance, she couldn't sing, she couldn't double dutch and she was the worst player on her all-black basketball team.  She was shy, uncool and painfully white.  And yet when she was suddenly sent to a rich white school, she found she was too "black" to fit in with her white classmates.  I'm Down is a hip, hysterical and at the same time beautiful memoir that will have you howling with laughter, recommending it to friends and questioning what it means to be black and white in America. Similar books: Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress by Susan Jane Gilman Tibetan Peach Pie by Tom Robbins Lust & Wonder by Augusten Burroughs Revenge of the Paste Eaters by Cheryl Peck Dark at the Roots by Sarah Thyre Spectacles by Sue Perkins Scrappy Little Nobody by Anna Kendrick I'm Not the New Me by Wendy McClure No Land's Man by Aasif Mandvi Mixed by Angela Nissel The Last Black Unicorn by Tiffany Haddish Queen of the Oddballs by Hillary Carlip Home Is Burning by Dan Marshall Girl Walks Into a Bar... by Rachel Dratch Why I'm Like This by Cynthia Kaplan Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain Dry by Augusten Burroughs The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson Why Not Me? by Mindy Kaling