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Product Identifiers

PublisherKodansha America, Incorporated

ISBN-10156836010X

ISBN-139781568360102

eBay Product ID (ePID)9038724965

Product Key Features

Book TitleHaving Our Say : the Delany Sisters First 100 Years

Number of Pages212 Pages

LanguageEnglish

TopicWomen, Cultural Heritage, Ethnic Studies / African American Studies

Publication Year1993

IllustratorYes

GenreSocial Science, Biography & Autobiography

AuthorAnnie Elizabeth Delany, Sarah Delany

FormatHardcover

Dimensions

Item Height0.9 in

Item Weight18.9 Oz

Item Length6.1 in

Item Width9.2 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceTrade

LCCN93-023890

Dewey Edition20

Dewey Decimal973/.0496073/0092 B

SynopsisAn inspiring memoir by two lively, keen-witted African American senior citizens. In their 200+ combined years, Sadie and Bessie Delany have seen it all. They saw their father, who was born into slavery, become America's first black Episcopal bishop. They saw their mother--a woman of mixed racial parentage who was born free--give birth to ten children, all of whom would become college-educated, successful professionals in a time when blacks could scarcely expect to receive a high school diploma. They saw the post-Reconstruction South, the Jim Crow laws,, An intimate portrait of a multi-racial family, taking us through the glory days of Harlem to the first days of integration in the New York City suburbs. Over six months on The New York Times bestseller list., "When you get real old, honey," says Bessie Delany, "you lay it all on the table. There's an old saying: Only little children and old folks tell the truth." In Having Our Say Bessie, age 101, and her sister Sadie, age 103, do just that-and then some. Filled with humorous and poignant anecdotes, this inspiring dual memoir offers a rare glimpse of the birth of black freedom- and the rise of the black middle class-in America. It is a chronicle of remarkable achievement. Sadie and Bessie Delany recall growing up with eight other siblings in turn-of-the-century North Carolina: their father was born in slavery, yet became the nation's first elected black Episcopal bishop; their mother could have "passed" for white but chose not to. With irrepressible pluck, the sisters confronted the first days of Jim Crow and legal segregation, and took part in the World War I-era migration North, rising to professional prominence during the heyday of Harlem. Along the way they met such legendary figures as black leaders Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois and entertainers Cab Calloway and Lena Home. Both sisters favored careers over marriage, despite many opportunities. Later, they settled in the still partly-rural Bronx, then integrated a suburban neighborhood in the '50s. Each has triumphed in her own way: "Queen Bess" with feistiness; "Sweet Sadie" with quiet determination. Though warmly skeptical of each other's style, they remain devoted. "She may be one- hundred-and-one years old, comments Sadie, "but she's still my little sister." Today they are fragile, yet fiercely independent. They still live alone in their own house. They make their own peach preserves and their own soap, and don't own a telephone ("it's the biggest nuisance invented by mankind"). Radio keeps them informed-and their opinions on current events are to be reckoned with. Sadie and Bessie Delany's lifelong insights provide us with a priceless oral history of our nation's past century. And what they "have to say" shows us, as no one else can, where we've been, how far we've come...and how far we have to go.

LC Classification NumberE185.97.H35