Mary
An Autobiography
by Mary E. Mebane

256 pp., 5 1/2 x 8 1/2

ISBN: 0-8078-4821-2 Paperback $16.50

   

"What stays with me from Mebane's book Mary are the descriptive passages about day to day life in the rural South of not very long ago. I had nearly forgotten washday and the making of starch, for instance, chicken feet dinners and the canning of fresh peaches. The struggle of a talented 'different' young black woman to free herself from familial and societal oppression is, fortunately, set among these once familiar community and family activities which are meticulously and beautifully detailed."--Alice Walker

"Mary is simply heaven--a painful, funny, romantic, tragic, intensely personal account of a young black woman coming of age in the back country of North Carolina, so real you can taste the salt of her tears and feel her fingernails biting into your flesh in the moments of senseless tension. I can not remember when I have read a book more moving."--Harrison E. Salisbury

"A quirky, highly personal, touching book."--Katha Pollitt, Mother Jones

"A graceful and subtly crafted autobiography. . . . Like her predecessors in the tradition of major literary autobiographers (among them Richard Wright and Maya Angelou) [Mebane] demonstrates that the ability to manipulate language allowed her a measure of freedom and autonomy that was otherwise unavailable to her."--Sewanee Review



Born in rural North Carolina in 1933, into the last generation before the lines of segregation were broken, the young Mary Mebane felt herself trapped in a "world without options." But even in the face of poverty, racism, and the chilling certainty that her mother's affection would never be won, she vowed to escape.

In this powerful autobiography, first published in 1981, Mebane recalls the joys and chores of her country childhood, the pain of her alienation from her family and community, and her dawning awareness that in her gifts for language and learning lay her key to freedom. With her graduation from college comes a triumph that is both hard-won and bittersweet.

Mary E. Mebane (1933-1992) was a graduate of North Carolina College (now North Carolina Central University) and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she earned a Ph.D. in English. She taught at the University of South Carolina and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and was also a frequent contributor to the op-ed page of the New York Times.


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