PUSHED BACK TO STRENGTH

A lyrical recollection of a segregated Memphis childhood, rich in love and wisdom, that, unfortunately, peters out in typical Sixties-generation preoccupations. Wade-Gayles (English and Women's Studies/Spelman College) grew up in a housing project in Memphis during the late 40's and early 50's at a time when a housing project ``was a stopping-off place. A decent, but temporary home you lived in until you were able to buy a real home.'' Her parents were divorced, and her father, though a railroad porter living in Chicago, was a vital presence in her life—as were her mother and grandmother, figures of outstanding courage and determination, and relatives like the tragically doomed Uncle Prince. It was Wade-Gayles's grandmother who responded, when the author complained of whites ``always pushing us back,'' that ``They don't know it, but they're pushing you back to us, where you can get strong''—a response that held the family together, set high standards of behavior and accomplishment, and gave Wade-Gayles the confidence to go to college and graduate school, to become an activist in the civil- rights movement, and, later, to teach college. Though segregation was a harsh presence in Memphis, the author poignantly contrasts life in the projects, in schools segregated but ``challenging and uncompromising in their insistence on excellent academic performance and exemplary character,'' and in the supportive black churches with the bleak killing-fields the inner-city has become today. Now married with two adult children, Wade-Gayles relates her somewhat undifferentiated opinions of whites; her belief in ultimate integration preceded by a period of racial separation; her ideas on gender; and a spiritual quest after her beloved mother's death that led to an encounter with an Ndepp priestess from Senegal. An evocative recollection of a community cruelly defined by race but sustained by loving strength and deep faith.