Primary Lessons

Name: Primary Lessons
SKU: 4936
Price: 21.00 USD
Availability: InStock

Sarah Bracey White

$21.00

A rebellious young woman in the segregated South.

Ripped from middle-class life in Philadelphia, and transplanted to a single-parent household in the segregated south, Sarah, a precocious black child struggles to be the master of her fate. She refuses to accept the segregation that tries to confine her—a system her mother accepts as the southern way of life. A brave memoir that testifies to the author’s fiery spirit and sense of self that sustained her through family, social, and cultural upheavals. It also puts her at the forefront of the change that Martin Luther King dreamed about.

Categories: All Books, Memoir, Prose, Sarah Bracey White Tags: Primary Lessons, Sarah White

Meet the Author

SARAH BRACEY WHITE was born in Sumter, South Carolina. She is a writer, teacher, arts consultant and motivational speaker. The author of a collection of poetry, Feelings Brought to Surface, her creative essays are included in the anthologies Children of the Dream; Dreaming in Color, Living in Black and White; Aunties: 35 Writers Celebrate Their Other Mother; and Gardening On A Deeper Level. Her essays have been published in many regional newspapers and on the internet. She lives with her husband in Westchester County, NY.

Critic Reviews

“In Primary Lessons, Sarah White recounts her childhood years in the 1950s and early 60s, from a brief, idyllic-seeming stay as a very young child with a beloved aunt in Philadelphia, to a return home to South Carolina to live with her siblings and her single mom, who was doing her best to hold the family together. Although the author chafed at the restrictions imposed by the Jim Crow South, she grows close to her mother and comes to understand the tough choices that had been made, but that doesn’t dampen the author’s determination to leave those limitations behind and forge her own, more independent path.”
— Amy Nathan, author of Round and Round Together and Take a Seat—Make a Stand

I first met Sarah Bracey White when she shared a portrait of her enterprising, entrepreneurial Aunt Susie. Though Susie shows up again in Primary Lessons, it is Sarah’s voice that pulls the reader in. It’s also the story of the author’s legacy, so enriched by her aunt and her indomitable mom who, because of their flair and despite their flaws, imparted wisdom and dispensed love that helped Sarah become the amazing person revealed in this warm-hearted, truth-telling life journey.
— Ingrid Sturgis, author of Aunties: 35 Writers Celebrate Their Other Mother