Julie's Reviews > Coming of Age in Mississippi: The Classic Autobiography of a Young Black Girl in the Rural South

This was a pretty remarkable book, one that truly grows on you as you follow Annie Moody through her life. What works about Coming Of Age is the juxtaposition of writing style and storyline. Moody lets her story unfold using an unsentimental, no-nonsense tone. While her early years growing up in a small rural Mississippi town in the '40s were not marked by violence, the early stirrings of the Civil Rights movement prompted a rapid and ruthless white repression of black civil rights. The spare nature of her prose made the frustrations and hopelessness of Civil Rights Workers and average black folks all the more poignant.

This was the kind of book that should be required reading for any American, especially considering the truly vile racism that this year's election has unearthed in some of those "pro-America" parts of our country - and, sadly, in some blue states, too.