The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother's Life in the Detroit Numbers - Hardcover

Davis, Bridgett M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316558737 ISBN 13: 9780316558730

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company, 2019

Synopsis

As seen on the TODAY SHOW
A singular memoir highlighting "the outstanding humanity of black America" that tells the story of one unforgettable mother, her devoted daughter, and the life they lead in the Detroit numbers of the 1960s and 1970s (James McBride)
In 1958, the very same year that an unknown songwriter named Berry Gordy borrowed $800 to found Motown Records, a pretty young mother from Nashville, Tennessee borrowed $100 from her brother to run a Numbers racket out of her home. That woman was Fannie Davis, Bridgett M. Davis' mother.
Part bookie, part banker, mother, wife, granddaughter of slaves, Fannie ran her numbers business for 34 years, doing what it took to survive in a legitimate business that just happened to be illegal. She created a loving, joyful home, sent her children to the best schools, bought them the best clothes, mothered them to the highest standard, and when the tragedy of urban life struck, soldiered on with her stated belief: "Dying is easy. Living takes guts."
A daughter's moving homage to an extraordinary parent, The World According to Fannie Davis is also the suspenseful, unforgettable story about the lengths to which a mother will go to "make a way out of no way" to provide a prosperous life for her family -- and how those sacrifices resonate over time.

About this title

About the Author

Bridgett M. Davis is Professor of Journalism and the Writing Professions at Baruch College, CUNY, where she teaches creative, film and narrative writing and is Director of the Sidney Harman Writer-in-Residence Program. A graduate of Spelman College in Atlanta, and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, she is the director of the award-winning feature film Naked Acts, as well as the author of two novels, Into the Go-Slow and Shifting Through Neutral. She lives in Brooklyn, NY with her family.

Review

New York Times Editor's Choice
Code Switch Book Club pick

Well-Read Black Girl Book Club Pick
A Buzzfeed Book Club Pick




"The World According to Fannie Davis is a daughter's gesture of loving defiance, an act of reclamation, an absorbing portrait of her mother in full. Blending memoir and social history, [Davis] recounts her mother's extraordinary story alongside the larger context of Motor City's rise and fall."―Jennifer Szalai, New York Times

"Davis's heartwarming memoir honors her remarkable mother, who made a good life for her family in the '60s and '70s."―New York Times, Editor's Choice

"A rich and heartwarming memoir honors a remarkable mother....We need more stories like Fannie's-the triumph and good life of a lucky black woman in a deeply corrupt world."―New York Times Book Review

"The novelist and teacher illuminates the life of her iron-willed mother, who in the 1960s and '70s spearheaded
Detroit's shadow economy (through an illegal lottery known as "The Numbers") in order to bolster both her family and the city's burgeoning black middle class."―O, Oprah Magazine Reading Room

"The author candidly and poignantly transports readers to her formative years in Detroit, where her mother, Fannie, successfully ran numbers-- right from the family's dining room table-- with class, determination and dignity to spare."―Bridgette Bartlett Royall, Essence Magazine

"The book blends memoir with the compelling social history of the numbers, a lottery game that operated outside of the law but very much inside the context of African-American life and culture."―Kate Tuttle, The Boston Globe

"The story of Fannie Davis, as her daughter so thoroughly tells it, is the story of not just one woman, in one city, at one period in time; it is, in many ways, the story of black America, the resilience and solidarity of the marginalized."―Entertainment Weekly

"Novelist Bridgett M. Davis turned to nonfiction in what started out as the story of her mother...But this memoir turned out to be much more: a panorama of African-American communities in this era, the resolve they demonstrated and the restrictions put upon them in their pursuit of the American dream. It's a family story of nationwide scale."―David Canfield, Entertainment Weekly

"Bridgett M. Davis draws a loving portrait of her unforgettable mother who gamed the system and won. Davis is a witness to the journey of the African American strivers of Detroit, but she is also a witness to the evolution of her own remarkable family history. Combining rigorous research with an insider's access, The World According To Fannie Davis is a triumphant tale of female empowerment. Bridgett Davis' love letter to her mother lights a bold new path, because sometimes leaning in is not enough."―Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage

Edition details

• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 0316558737
• ISBN 13: 9780316558730
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 320