Redlined: A Memoir of Race, Change, and Fractured Community in 1960s Chicago

by Linda Gartz

Set against the backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement, Redlined exposes the racist lending rules that refuse mortgages to anyone in areas with even one black resident. As blacks move deeper into Chicago’s West Side during the 1960s, whites flee by the thousands. But Linda Gartz’s parents, Fred and Lil, choose to stay in their integrating neighborhood, overcoming previous prejudices as they meet and form friendships with their African American neighbors.

The community sinks into increasing poverty and crime after two race riots destroy its once vibrant business district, but Fred and Lil continue to nurture their three apartment buildings and tenants for the next 20 years in a devastated landscape even as their own relationship cracks and withers.

After her parents’ deaths, Gartz discovers long-hidden letters, diaries, documents, and photos stashed in the attic of her former home. Determined to learn what forces shattered her parents’ marriage and undermined her community, she searches through the family archives and immerses herself in books on racial change in American neighborhoods.

Told through the lens of Gartz’s discoveries of the personal and political, Redlined delivers a riveting story of a community fractured by racial turmoil, an unraveling and conflicted marriage, a daughter’s fight for sexual independence, and an up-close, intimate view of the racial and social upheavals of the 1960s.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Race, Social Justice, History

Audible Audio

First published April 3, 2018

About the author

Linda Gartz is a six-time Emmy-award-honored television producer, blogger, essay writer, and author of the memoir, Redlined.

Redlined was inspired by the trove of long-hidden family diaries, letters, photos, documents, (and so much more), which she discovered in her parents’ attic after their deaths. Once she began reading, she was instantly gripped by the power of her family’s words to take her into the minds and hearts of each family member. Every new detail she learned fueled her quest to discover what forces had undermined her parents’ marriage and fractured her community. The result is Redlined.

Linda was born and raised in Chicago’s West Garfield Park neighborhood, where she attended Tilton Elementary School and then Luther High School North (LHN), where she met lifelong friends she still hangs out with today.

Her random choice to major in German at Northwestern University opened the door to a year of study abroad at the University of Munich. (Decades later, she’d use her German to translate scores of letters she found in the archives.) A year after graduation, she returned to Northwestern to earn her M.A.T. (Masters of Arts in Teaching).

Linda taught elementary school for a total of nine years. Eager for a new challenge, she took a video producing class, which hooked her on pursuing a career in television production. She started networking to get a foot in the door.

Since then, Linda has worked for all the major TV networks in Chicago, mostly on documentaries but also producing magazine pieces and consumer segments for the local ABC 4 p.m. newscast. Her productions have aired on PBS, ABC, CBS and Investigation Discovery Channel, syndicated nation-wide.

Her educational videos include Begin with Love, hosted by Oprah Winfrey and Grandparenting, hosted by Maya Angelou.

Linda has published articles and essays in literary journals, online, and in local and national magazines and newspapers, including The Chicago Tribune.

She earned her private pilot’s license at age 26 (when she’d try just about anything), and later, with her best college buddy and their husbands, raced J-24 sailboats on Lake Michigan.

Linda’s yearly camping trips with the family to Devil’s Lake State Park in Wisconsin and the exciting road trips her Dad planned for the family made her a lifelong fan of travel and the outdoors. She’s backpacked in the Sonoran Desert, Colorado, and the Pacific Northwest.

Gardening has been a part of Linda’s life since she collected seeds as a little girl from her parents’ “four-o’clock” plants or helped dig up dahlia bulbs in fall and replant them in the spring. She now has lots of room to garden and likes planning the spaces and moving plants around to find their “happy” spot.

Like all writers, she reads as much as she can, both fiction and nonfiction (especially loves memoir).

Reviews

[Judy · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I picked up this book, I expected a story of the horrors of what redlining did to the African American community in the 60s and 70s, a period with which I am very familiar. Instead it was a memoir of how redlining impacted a white family with roots on the west side of Chicago. Valid, but perhaps mis-titled. I kept thinking “white people problems,” where escape is possible, unlike for people of color. We continue to live with the devastating effects of redlining. It’s just not addressed as the title of the book suggests.

[Casey Kennedy · Rating 1 out of 5]

this book is NOT ab redlining, it’s a memoir ab a white family that happened to stay on the west side a few yrs post white flight in the 60s/70s

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Redlined" was an educational and interesting read but the title is somewhat misleading. I expected more stories from a variety of characters affected by the Chicago practice of "redlining." Instead, I got Linda Gartz' personal experiences with her family's rental properties in West Garfield Park as the neighborhood changed. That's the main reason for my 3-star rating.

Someone should write the book I expected from a perspective similar to Desmond's "Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City" or Kotlowicz' "An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago."

Since the author is near my age, I identified with some of the experiences Linda had as a young woman in the 1960s. For example, Linda writes: "It suddenly all fell into place. I couldn’t believe it hadn’t occurred to me before! I thought of Mom urging me to take typing and shorthand so I could make a living and 'never be solely dependent on a man'...Secretary, teacher, or nurse—these were the big three career options for women in the 1950s and ’60s—all fine, upstanding professions, but basically considered to be the only work of which females were considered capable. A few extraordinary women broke free of these models, but they were the exception, not the rule."

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

After hearing a lot about Redlined by Linda Gartz, I purchased it on Kindle. Gartz offers a vivid and compelling family history against the backdrop of their changing Chicago neighborhood. She keeps a balanced understanding of the legacy of 'redlining'--the enforcing of physical racial boundaries--and its impact on her white family and the African American community. The bulk of the story involves her parents' relationship, with insights gleaned from their letters and diaries. Their determination to stay in their changing neighborhood as dedicated landlords was both their strength and their downfall. I found it an enjoyable memoir.

[Rita Dragonette · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Timely Look Back at Chicago’s Shameful Racial History through a Family that Stood Their Ground
Now that it’s been nearly a half-century, as a country we’re actively looking back at the 60’s for lessons that can be learned, or at least accurate history revealed, for how some of today’s problems began, in an attempt to solve them once and for all—particularly race relations, particularly here in Chicago.
Redlined is beautifully timed for that introspection. Set in the west side during the White Flight of the era, Gartz has fashioned an exquisite frame for how to tell the story of the insidious practice of Redlining in human terms. In a memoir of her family, inspired by the surprise discovery of hidden letters and diaries of her parents, Gartz has spun an ingenious story with macro/micro implications. As her parents refused to leave their home in a dangerously changing neighborhood rife with corrupt policies designed to keep out the very people who could have helped to stabilize the area, they served as societal stalwarts, though it cost them their marriage, and shattered a family.
In a daughter’s quest to understand, Gartz has given us an important book of the times, of people who didn’t realize they were heros, and of a city and a family that paid the price.

[Courtney · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is not as advertised. It is a standard memoir of a dysfunctional family. The summary and tag line lead you to believe that she is going to use her experiences as a white woman growing up in Chicago as the effects of redlining really take shape. Instead, she skips over all the points where she could have talked about the systems and policies and done some research. Instead, she comments on the violence without any understanding of the people there experiencing it or participating in it. She shows no understanding of her privileges and advantages. (A great missed example is the comparison of the 2 flat she and her husband bought and rented on the north side to her parents’ properties on the west side) she focuses on her own relationship with her mother and her parents relationships with each other. Fine for a memoir, but that is not how this book is described.
Very disappointing and a missed opportunity for some real insight into the city and neighborhood her family spent decades in.

[Justlesa Hall · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting read about the change that occurred on Westside neighborhoods in Chicago during the 60s. I wish the author had of included more historical facts and less about her family history but it was interesting to read about the perspective of someone my parent's age that lived on the other side of the city. Sometimes, her opinion felt forced as if she was just saying it because its 2018 and now politically correct.

[Story Circle Book Reviews · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was like finding the key to an encrypted message from the distant past. While cleaning out their parents' attic following their deaths, Linda Gartz and her brothers, Paul and Billy, came across what she describes as "gold"—box after box of journals, cards, and letters exchanged between their mother and father for more than 20 years.

"For decades," Gartz writes, "I had puzzled over what had caused the demise of my parents' marriage—Mom's recriminations against Dad, followed by his wounded retreat, their rift reducing me to tears. And what of the downfall of our community, where Dad's parents lived for half a century, raised three sons, and bought property, the apogee of the American dream?" Those boxes in the attic helped answer those questions and many more.

In Redlined: A Memoir of Race, Change, and Fractured Community in 1960s Chicago, Linda Gartz takes on the ambitious task of analyzing a city's social upheaval through the lens of her family's own turmoil. She succeeds, for the most part, though at times it's hard to identify the focus of the book.

Redlining, as Gartz explains, is a catch-22. It stemmed from the federal government's practice, begun in the 1930s, of ranking communities from A (green) to D (red) according to their creditworthiness. If a neighborhood had African American residents, regardless of their number, it was automatically marked red, or "redlined," meaning it was likely to decline. And because homeowners in these redlined areas were unable to get loans to improve their properties, the practice was in effect a self-fulfilling prophesy: once redlined, a neighborhood couldn't help but decline.

The child of immigrants who saw property ownership as the path to economic security, Fred Gartz and his wife, Lil, followed his parents' example, investing first in a modest "two-flat," a signature Chicago style apartment. Typically, owners would live on one floor and rent out the other, using the profit to defray the mortgage. But the Gartz family took that model a step further, not only renting out the first floor, but also allowing the three current tenants living on the second floor to remain. "It never occurred to me that it was odd," Lil Gartz wrote in her journal.

Gartz, on the other hand, found the situation more than a little odd. "The arrangement bemused me," she writes. "[M]y parents, newborn me, three-year old Paul, and off-balance Grandma K would share the intimacies of their already-complicated family life with three people they had never met before." Grandma K—short for Koroschetz—was Lil Gartz's mother, a woman whose presence in the household would become a wedge between Lil and Fred. Plagued by paranoid delusions, Grandma K had moved in with her daughter when she could no longer live alone.

Calling the Gartz family life "complicated" is an understatement indeed. After losing what had seemed like a secure position with Hotpoint, Fred Gartz took a job as a traveling fire inspector. Because his work took him away from home for weeks at a time, Lil was forced to assume even more responsibility at home—caring for the kids and her mentally ill mother, managing the family's finances, overseeing renovations on the two-flat, dealing with the tenants. Her resentment grew.

This situation epitomized the relationship between Lil and Fred Gartz—a good-natured but passive husband who preferred to avoid conflict, and an exceptionally capable wife who accepted challenges with a mixture of anger and guilt. Such was the milieu in which Linda Gartz and her brothers grew up.

It would be hard for a reader to miss the sense of emotional and physical claustrophobia that Gartz's narrative engenders. Add the racial turmoil of the time, and what results is an account that is both instructive and troubling.

More than memoir, Redlined is also a chronicle of evolving attitudes about race. Gartz writes, "With the civil rights movement as backdrop and a crumbling marriage in the foreground, this story tries to make sense of the racial transformation of our Chicago West Side community and its impact on our family dynamic, also formed by love, loss, madness, race, rage, and, ultimately, forgiveness."

Having acquired other properties in their neighborhood, the Gartz family stood firm while others fled from the influx of African Americans. Lil Gartz, in particular, had always assumed the best of her tenants, regardless of color, and treated them with respect; in turn, she expected they would respect her property and take good care of it. Her attitude was definitely not the norm.

Not surprisingly, there is no happy ending in Redlined, at least not where race relations are concerned. There is, however, a reconciliation of sorts in the family, the sense of a hard-won peace. That, it seems, should be the focus of the book; redlining is part of the story, but as Gartz herself points out, it's "backdrop," not the main event. If there's any fault in Redlined, it's that Gartz's compelling story isn't foregrounded enough. She did, indeed, find "gold" in her parents' attic, and that gold deserves to shine brighter.

by Susan Hanson
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women

[Rachel M · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve spent most of the past year interviewing family members of all generations about their lifetime memories, and through this, have come to more deeply understand each generation and the pushes and pulls between: the overlooked Silent Generation of 1924-1945, the radical, idealistic Baby Boomers, the cynical, rebellious Gen X-ers, and the crafty, tech-frontiering Millennials.

While reports of the angst between the Baby Boomers and Millennials are hard to escape these days, I don’t know much about the relationships between Baby Boomers and their parents, The Greatest Generation. What did the Baby Boomers react against, for example? What was it about these people coming of age in the 30s that prompted the bra burnings and free love of their children’s age?

My mom, a Baby Boomer, recommended this book, and it gave me new appreciation for this relationship and how each generation impacted the other. One thing that interested me most was that the author’s parents, while starting their marriage very much in love, became disenchanted over time, and the reason was the lack of support from in-laws on both sides. The often conflicting web of what all seem to be important values - honoring parents vs. prioritizing the marriage, working hard for work’s sake vs. knowing when more work is futile - can be trying on family life and challenge it even sometimes as much as outright misfortune or wrongdoing.

This book offered as well, a deeper understanding of the racial tensions that existed in the Chicago West side neighborhoods: how housing regulations of the time inherently swindled black families and gave them no foothold to build upon, and how few people were aware of how injustice was built into the system, and therefore understood black families as usurping white neighborhoods and trashing them. This look glimpse into the past helped me better understand the racial divide that exists today, and why, as the author came to believe, it is important not to inherently trust in the justice of our systems.

[Ellen Notbohm · Rating 5 out of 5]

How fortuitous is it that an archive of such size and significance fell into the hands of a storyteller as accomplished as Gartz, an award-winning filmmaker? It’s not a new story--immigrants making their way in a new land, their children’s hard-fought entrepreneurial dreams, a once-peaceful neighborhood going through the upheaval of racial and cultural change. But the warp and weft of this particular microcosm makes for some poignant and excruciating questions of conflicting loyalties. Gartz’s parents are stretched vapor-thin between responsibility to mentally ill and aging parents, to unending, nearly round-the-clock work on real estate they hope will someday support them, to growing children whose values and experiences are being shaped by unfamiliar new mores, and to a beloved neighborhood changing in ways they can’t stop, and can’t bring themselves to abandon. The story they left behind in twenty-five banker’s boxes of records and journals isn’t always flattering, and the courage it took to do that—and for Gartz to tell the story unflinchingly—makes for a remarkable read. The descriptions of the shameful, despicable redlining practices of the day will be revelatory information to many readers, and none too soon for something we have yet to see the last of even today.

[Andie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story of how unscrupulous real estate agents and bankers conspired to discriminate against black people in Chicago in the 1960’s is an ugly story, and Linda Gartz’s family’s experience is sadly illustrative of how the process worked. And she also shows how these discriminatory practices harmed not only the black people who wanted to buy homes in decent areas, but also the white people they were about to displace. Still I recognize the attitudes of white people as the entire west side of Chicago was "taken over", seemingly overnight, by black people. This part of the book is excellent.

Unfortunately, Ms. Gartz also used this book as an opportunity to spin tales of her dysfunctional family, and quite honestly, I’m just not interested

[Sandy Brusin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I grew up in Chicago during the same time frame that the author, Linda Gartz, grew up, so much of what she wrote resonated for me even though I grew up in Albany Park, not Garfield Park. The people in my neighborhood,like hers were mostly working class immigrants or first generation Americans with similar values. Like Gartz, I lived through the culture wars of the 60s and 70s, and struggled with many of the same issues and concerns. That time is so much like our present time. That's what really struck me.

[Robert Chiarito · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fifty years after Chicago's West Side riots that started after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., much of West Garfield Park has never recovered. But while the neighborhood’s challenges are often blamed on the riots of 1968, a new memoir shows that the neighborhood fell apart before that as the result of a government policy known as redlining.

Most books about Redlining – the government’s racist policy of not giving loans to anyone living in areas where blacks lived that started with The New Deal in 1930s and was enforced until being ruled illegal in 1968 – are academic in nature, filled with stats and charts and while sometimes informative, never get to the toll it took on those who lived through it. Until now. With her wonderfully insightful debut book, Redlined: A Memoir of Race, Change, and Fractured Community in 1960s Chicago, Linda Gartz tells the story of her white family and the effects redlining had on them and their neighborhood, Chicago’s West Garfield Park.

Gartz, an Emmy-Award winning television producer, told me in an interview that I did for Chicago Magazine recently that after her parents died, she discovered 25 bankers’ boxes filled with journals, letters and other mementos from her grandparents and parents, all of whom called West Garfield Park home.

Gartz calls on this material to get inside the thought process of her family, and does a fine job of it. It must have been a tall task to keep focus based on the amount of material that she had to sort through, but the book is all the better for its detail and depth. As the reader will discover, there are a lot of issues that impact the Gartz family, the mental illness of her grandmother; attitudes about pre-marital sex and women’s role in society; along with the focus of redlining and the changes in the neighborhood. At times, she seems to have gotten lost down a rabbit hole, focusing a bit too much on a family issue; but I’ll admit that’s a petty grievance.

For Gartz, who also grew up and remained in West Garfield Park until she was in college in the late 1960s, the story of her family could not be told without a large focus on redlining. Her parents owned and rented three buildings, including the one they lived in, so the affects of redlining threatened her family even more than most. As she points out, the fear of blacks moving into the neighborhood was based on more than racism. For the whites, the fear was that their property value would go down, which for the Gartz family, threatened their livelihood. That said, Gartz does not spare her family or sugar-coat things. Redlining may have caused whites to fear for their property values, but there was genuine racism from the neighborhood and her family. She writes about her mother telling a black woman who rings their doorbell to inquire about apartments that, “We do not rent to coloreds.”

Not long after redlining began in their neighborhood, the Gartz family would have to rent to blacks, as most of their white neighbors, including Gartz’s grandparents, had fled to the suburbs. Along the way, the Gartz family discovered that the only thing that changed was that they now had black neighbors, neighbors who they grew to love even more than their previous white neighbors.

Her parents were also unlike a lot of building owners, who packed up and moved out of the neighborhood and neglected their buildings. Her father’s job caused him to be on the road most of the time, so it was her mother who was largely responsible for the day to day upkeep of the buildings, which she took great pride in. Her mother was not a do-gooder per se, but did believe that if the buildings were kept in good shape the tenants would respect them, which they did. Perhaps reading this in 2018 sounds like that common sense, but it’s important to remember that many whites did not know enough in the mid-sixties to challenge common falsehoods. Gartz writes about how whites believed that once blacks moved into their neighborhood, the neighborhood often turned into a slum. But it was not the blacks who turned it into a slum, it was the landlords who neglected their buildings and a redlining system that forced blacks to be segregated to areas that couldn’t accommodate their growing numbers, often forcing several families into one apartment.

For whites, they were left with a neighborhood of declining property values and for those who stayed, most of their old friends and neighbors were gone. But they could leave. In fact, it was the FHA who underwrote what became known as “white flight,” giving loans by the thousands to those moving to the suburbs while areas like West Garfield Park became off limits to any mortgages. So, not only did the neighborhood the Gartz’s live for decades change racially, it changed economically and with that came crime. Add on the impact of the 1968 riots in which most of the business district of West Garfield Park and other West Side neighborhoods were destroyed; the crack cocaine problem of the 1980s and it’s not hard to see why the neighborhood has not been stabilized.

Redlined, if put in the right hands, would make a great movie. It’s a fascinating book and a much-needed look at how a national policy affected a specific Chicago neighborhood through the eyes of someone who lived through it. Hypothetically, it will be equally fascinating if 50 years from now, a book by a black resident who currently lives in West Garfield Park focuses on gentrification – perhaps the only hope residents have to cling to; for without serious governmental help, gentrification (another hot-button issue), may be the only thing that rids the neighborhood of the crime, poverty and open-air drug markets that can trace its roots directly back to redlining.

[Michelle Cox · Rating 5 out of 5]

Though I'm not usually a fan of non-fiction, nor of memoir, I decided anyway to pick up Linda Gartz's, "Redlined," not only because of it's historical perspective of Chicago (which I AM most definitely interested in), but because it promised to perhaps shed some light on what is currently happening around the country. "Redlined" certainly delivered on both fronts and was delightedly entertaining to boot. I flew through this book! Gartz's prose is easy to read, and I loved learning about her own family's story set against the backdrop of Chicago, circa 1960. It's a fascinating read and very informative!

[Susan Milauskas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. I grew up on the south side of Chicago in the sixties. Our family (white) also stayed after white flight. I was encouraged by this story about Linda's family's experiences. Her attention to detail concerning the real estate practice of redlining and her analysis of how both whites and blacks were manipulated and effected by that practice gave me better understanding of why the neighborhoods changed so drastically. There is much to think about and learn from in this book. I was particularly impressed with the grace she had in writing about her parents as they handled challenges of all sorts as fallible human being. She is honest about their faults but also highlighted their wonderful qualities. As we face new challenges in our world today this was a very helpful book to read and ponder.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

I should probably stop reading books by white women about how racist systems and policy have affected *them*

[Molly · Rating 2 out of 5]

A book called redlined that’s not really about redlining?! The stories themselves were compelling enough but the title just makes no sense to me. Glad everybody else in my class agreed lol

[Hannah Slowey · Rating 2 out of 5]

I expected this book to be a lot more focused on the fractured community of Chicago but rather it was much more focused on the authors life.

[Derya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Informed insight!

[Mary Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Redlined, Linda Gartz does a masterful job of weaving her family story with the larger historical picture of what happened on the West Side of Chicago and in many other communities during the 1960’s. Her book provides the broader context for what many people experienced on a personal level. Her parents’ notes and diaries offer close-up documentation of the events of the time, as well as of their own personal dramas. While many families fled the West Side, her family was unique in their decision to stay and continue to manage their rental properties.
As a fellow, West-sider, I appreciate Linda’s accounts of the tumultuous events of the 1960s and 70s. The message to white homeowners at that time was “Sell now or lose your life savings!” Neighbors moved out in the middle of the night to avoid the scorn of those who were staying. Those who were moving blamed the newcomers, mostly African Americans, rather than the real culprits – the policy of the federal government, including the FHA, along with the banks and realtors. Black or white, we were all victims of a corrupt system.
Most people who lived through this time have made peace with the past and moved on, but for some the wound has never healed. Hopefully, this book will help people understand the bigger picture of the corruption that drove the social changes.

[Francine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Linda Gartz combines well-researched Chicago history with her family’s own story in this astute memoir of life in the 1950’s-80’s. She particularly relates how the practice of “redlining” - government officials and bankers partnering to make sure it was difficult for black families to buy homes in specific neighborhoods - affected the black community’s socio-economic status and led to poorer race relations. This also affected her family in that they chose to remain in the West End even as their white neighbors moved out. Her mother learned to temper her own racist attitudes while continuing to judge her own daughter harshly. They had several properties and rented to any family that qualified with the appropriate rent and respect of their properties. But her family’s own difficulties were multiplied by her mother’s resentment of her dad’s working away from Chicago while she managed the properties, and Linda’s mentally unbalanced grandmother added additional instability. Well written and nuanced memoir.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

An engaging and touching memoir of growing up in a changing family, city and country. This book tells Linda Gartz's story of growing up as the daughter of first-generation European immigrants who survived the Great Depression, settled in what was then an all-white West Garfield Park, and watched as the neighborhood's demographics and the nation's mores changed around them.

While there were a few spots where some more judicious editing would've helped clarify the timeline or relevant characters, the book was quite good. It's also a nice example of how to use family history in a way that would engage readers unrelated by blood.

It's not a complaint, exactly, but I think the book's title oversells the place that race and redlining take in the story. While it's definitely a piece of the story, it's not the central feature of Gartz's narrative, which kept surprising me as I read. It's more a book about a family affected by redlining, then redlining and the families it affected.

[Tammy Letherer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book so much! I wasn't sure if it would be more of a personal story or a historical one, and I was impressed by the way Gartz blended both in such a satisfying way. In fact, her sense of balance was remarkable throughout; even as she unflinchingly describes her parents and grandparents and their shortcomings, she infuses her memories with unmistakable love and understanding. And she manages to put enough of herself on the page to make it all come to life. As a fellow writer, I kept having an image of many balls being kept in the air at once. Gartz gives each character the perfect amount of attention---no easy feat! I loved the detail and came away feeling both educated and touched by these lives. A remarkable story!

[Michael Katz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enlightening look at a Chicago family in the 60's.

I really enjoyed this memoir by Linda Gartz, who blends her own experiences with a trove of diaries left by her parents. Having grown up in the suburbs, I was re-introduced to the sixties from an entirely different perspective. While the redlining mortgtage policies are only part of the story, they are the backdrop for the social stress that affected her family as they remained anchored to their deteriorating Westside neighborhood. These are issues that resonate clearly today. Gartz's narrative, enriched by the separate diaries of her mother and father, are related with heart and an honest struggle for empathy.

[Pat Camalliere · Rating 4 out of 5]

I knew before I read Redlined that it was about a family living on the West side of Chicago that struggled to survive in a racially changing neighborhood. I expected it to be more about the struggle than about the family history, and yet, by the time I finished the book I realized this was really the best way to understand the family’s perspective, by knowing them and their lives. The author has written a fine memoir, but understand that it is not a description of racial change but a memoir that you will be reading.

[june3 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three stars for a superb and carefully documented personal history, together with amazing pictures! Ms. Gartz Is certainly approaching 70 years old herself at this point, but her recollections of the social upheavals of the 60s and 70s are spot on.

That said, I wish she had just published this as a personal memoir of a time and place. This book itself had almost nothing to do with race relations or redlining per se, it's almost as though this concept was superimposed on an otherwise completed book for some sort of global or political legitimacy.

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was 95% not about redlining. It was a memoir of three generations of one family that lived on Chicago's West Side during decades of vast change in the 20th century. But it was more about a family memoir, and one woman learning more about her parents after they had passed than it was about redlining.
It was well written, but some parts were problematic.
Overall, 3.5 stars because THIS BOOK WAS NOT ABOUT REDLINING.

[Kat · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is not informational and is not about the historical practice of redlining. I came into this because I was interested to learn more about redlining but that is not what this book is about; its merely a simple memoir about a family in Chicago. This doesn't seem like a book by a professional writer, it feels like a brief summarization of a family history by a family member researching genealogy or doing a school report.

[Jade J. Maze · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting read. The author had quite a challenge telling her personal story and the history of the neighborhood. The effort was valiant. As a reader I wanted it to stay in one flavor or the other. I can understand the dilemma and the desire to do both. So I guess that just comes down to preference. I gladly recommend this book.

[Marilyn Hagar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Informative and touching. I loved the blend of family life and the discussion of how policy affects real people. Though I grew up far away from Chicago, it was such an accurate description of the times. I got so into the story, I didn’t want it to end and the next morning after I finished it, wanted to know what happened next — the true sign of a story well told.