Another Way Home: The Tangled Roots of Race in One Chicago Family - Hardcover

Hartfield, Ronne

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226318214 ISBN 13: 9780226318219

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2004

Synopsis

In her prologue to Another Way Home, Ronne Hartfield notes the dearth of stories about African Americans who have occupied the area of mixed race with ease and harmony for generations. Her moving family history is filled with such stories, told in beautifully crafted and unsentimental prose. Spanning most of the twentieth century, Hartfield's book celebrates the special occasion of being born and reared in a household where miscegenation was the rule rather than the exception—where being a woman of mixed race could be a fundamental source of strength, vitality, and courage.

Hartfield begins with the early life of her mother, Day Shepherd. Born to a wealthy British plantation owner and the mixed-race daughter of a former slave, Day negotiates the complicated circumstances of plantation life in the border country of Louisiana and Mississippi and, as she enters womanhood, the quadroon and octoroon societies of New Orleans. Equally a tale of the Great Migration, Another Way Home traces Day's journey to Bronzeville, the epicenter of black Chicago during the first half of the twentieth century. Here, through the eyes of Day and, ultimately, her daughter, we witness the bustling city streets and vibrant middle-class culture of this iconic black neighborhood. We also relive crucial moments in African American history as they are experienced by the author's family and others in Chicago's South Side black community, from the race riots of 1919 and the Great Depression to the murder of Emmett Till and the dawn of the civil rights movement.

Throughout her book, Hartfield portrays mixed-race Americans navigating the challenges of their lives with resilience and grace, making Another Way Home an intimate and compelling encounter with one family's response to our racially charged culture.

About this title

About the Author

Ronne Hartfield is a senior research fellow in religion and art at the Harvard University Center for the Study of World Religions and an international museum consultant. She is the former Woman’s Board Endowed Executive Director of Museum Education at the Art Institute of Chicago and was executive director of Chicago-based Urban Gateways: The Center for Arts in Education.

Reviews

Hartfield's mother, Day Shepherd, was part of a line of mixed-race individuals, many of whom, like herself, could have passed for white. Instead of leading the lives of tragic mulattoes who were unable to fit into either white or black worlds, or opting to pass for white and giving up their family heritage, her mother's family managed to live happily, even within the severe limitations of racial restrictions of the South, in Mississippi and Louisiana, and later in the North in Chicago. Hartfield draws on her mother's recollections and genealogical research to trace the family from their roots on a plantation, where the white master fathered children with his slave and offered them as much protection as he could under the circumstances, including shielding them from the disapproving eyes of his mother, to a vibrant family of middle-class comfort and accomplishments. This is a warm and touching memoir of a close-knit family as well as a record of the tumultuous history of race relations in the U.S. Vanessa Bush
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Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226318214
• ISBN 13: 9780226318219
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224