Open House: Of Family, Friends, Food, Piano Lessons, and the Search for a Room of My Own
From Publishers Weekly
With a résumé that includes degrees from Wellesley and Harvard Law School, a law professorship at Columbia, a column in the Nation and a trio of books, Williams would seem to have enough material to fill several volumes of memoirs. In this thought-provoking, unconventional one, she combines family history with discourses on everything from race, class and slavery’s legacy to why she likes O magazine. One chapter, “The Kitchen,” begins with an account of b…
Buy Open House: Of Family, Friends, Food, Piano Lessons, and the Search for a Room of My Own at Amazon
This review is from: Open House: Of Family, Friends, Food, Piano Lessons, and the Search for a Room of My Own (Hardcover)
Patricia Williams has a column in the Nation, Diary of a Mad Law Professor, which I found out about through reading this great book. I was at a music conference at Wellesley last summer and happened upon this in the bookstore. There were not many other books, but thank God they decided at least to have something there by an alumna, because the three books I had brought were not wearing well: 1) a cynical though I suppose funny report on Howard Dean’s presidential campaign, 2) a book about how to survive in a nasty office environment and 3) I forget the third. Not great energy! But Williams’ book was very warm and funny. I was particularly admiring of how much she knew of her own family background. A lot of family background sections in the beginnings of autobiographies can be ho-hum. This one was a wild ride! It reads as though she knew her ancestors personally. The book is a very important discussion of race relations and you just want everything to go her way. The college bookstore had a much bigger selection THIS year.
This review is from: Open House: Of Family, Friends, Food, Piano Lessons, and the Search for a Room of My Own (Hardcover)
1/22/05 This library borrow had a few gaps(pages that I skimmed and decided that I was satisfied with learning of general content(especially those chapters dealing with the topic of whysome blacks are very pale complexion. . . I’m sure many of those who are very light compexion don’t appreciate the topic either,since it serves no purpose whatsoever and especially since persons the complexion of Cuba Goodins Jr or Oprah Winfrey aren’t having to explain why they arn’t the maximum African Complexion of darkest blue black. . . . However author Patricia J Williams has a very fine vocabulary which ribbets from every page I ead or skimmed, she has had great opportunity as well as many challenges to confront as a well educated black and it was very sorrowing on the last pages (Pgs 244-245) to see her listing of so many of her peers who’ve died prematurely(Jerome Culp,Dwight Greene,Mary Jo Frug,Teresa Brennan,Haywood Burns,Shanara Gilbert,Denise Carty-Benia,Andrew Haynes. Her Page 242 mentions author Erma Bombeck and the article re Ms Bombeck helped her to decide to hold “an open house” to celebrate the fact that her son had returned to good health . Ms Bombeck(author of “I hate housework, and also written during a trying period of illness that she wished she’d given more house parties without worry whether peple would approve of how the house looked” The book jacket is beautifully designed by aDebbie Glasserman to represent 5 keys of different sizes and shapes and going in differen directions for Open House of family,friends,food,piano lessons and the search for a “Room of My Own” with two keys on the back jacket perhaps reflecting the words “Current Affairs/Memoir which are written below the critics by authors : Henry Louis Gates Jr, Gloria Steinem, Derrick Bell, Letty Cottin Poprebin, Veronica Chambers, Maurice Berger. 1/22/05 abj