3 Review(s)

A telling memoir by an exciting new voice, Multicolored Memories of a Black Southern Girl explores journalist Kitty Oliver's coming of age as she makes the crossing from an all-black to a predominantly white world. Born and raised in an all-black area of Jacksonville, Florida, Oliver was one of the first African American freshmen to enter the University of Florida. Though she chronicles the strains of her transition from Jim Crow to desegregation, this book is much more than a memoir of the turbulent sixties. It is an upbeat journal of self-discovery in the aftermath of that decade, a look at one woman's coming to terms with living an integrated life in America. With humor, poignancy, and lyrical language (reminiscent at times of another Florida writer, Zora Neale Hurston), Oliver shares her passage from the "old world" to the new -- an immigrant's journey indicative of the American experience. Blending past and present, she searches for roots from the Gullah or "Geechee" culture of South Carolina to the urban streets of northern Florida to the multicultural mix of South Florida's diverse ethnic cultures, serving up family stories with large helpings of southern "folktalk," food, and music along the way.