by Douglas Haas-Bennett J. Griffin Hughes ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 19, 2018
A wandering remembrance that offers astute commentary on the South.
A debut memoir that also reflects on the cultural transformation of the American South during the 20th century.
Haas-Bennett was born in 1927 in Durham, North Carolina, the descendant of old, Southern aristocracy, or as she puts it, “old plantation stock.” By the time of her birth, her family had little money but lived among antique relics of their former wealth—including furniture that they couldn’t afford to replace. Their area of North Carolina hadn’t received too many newcomers since the 1600s, she says, so intermarriage between distant family members was common—the author’s mother and father were fifth cousins. Haas-Bennett sensitively relates how the post-bellum South, in the middle of the 1900s, was experiencing a slow metamorphosis; while many vestiges of the Old South remained—particularly virulent racism, including segregation—there was also a liberal push for integration. She had plenty of occasions to experience this tense dichotomy; for instance, she and her first husband, writer Ben Haas, were threatened by members of the White Citizens Council, a pro-segregation group, when they withheld their support. After graduating from the Richmond Professional Institute College of William and Mary in 1948, the author opened a modest custom costume shop and designed clothes for dolls and debutantes, and this would remain her profession for most of her life. Haas-Bennett’s remembrance—co-authored by her former costume shop employee, debut author Hughes, who provides a prologue—is more anecdotally impressionistic than autobiographically exhaustive. As such, each chapter offers a charming, if meandering, vignette of recollection. The book concludes with a series of short contributions from those who know the author well, including her three sons and several former employees. Much of the Haas-Bennett’s attention is devoted to the idiosyncratic details of her life—which included two marriages and years of living in Austria—and although these reflections are relaxed and pleasant in tone, they’re likely to be of interest mostly to those who know her personally. However, her considerations of the South are remarkably nuanced while addressing its struggle with the legacy of slavery.
A wandering remembrance that offers astute commentary on the South.Pub Date: May 19, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-984228-65-9
Page Count: 375
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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developed by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
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by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
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