This Leaves Me Okay: Race, Legacy, and Letters From My Grandmother

by Walter Pryor

Lucille “Mama Ceal” Hatch Eldridge wrote to her grandson Walter Pryor weekly for nearly 30 years, from his boyhood until she died at 80. Most extraordinarily, Mama Ceal was not a well-educated person, having completed only the eighth grade. As a live-in maid, raising other people’s children, she had little leisure time to write. Yet, her letters, sprinkled throughout This Leaves Me Okay (Heliotrope Books, May 2025), helped Pryor profoundly to feel he mattered. His reflective memoir shares a local’s perspective of the lesser-known rural Arkansas Black experience through his grandmother’s story and interweaves well-known civil rights struggles that Pryor and his family recall. A CAO and General Counsel now at a financial institution that supports underserved communities, Pryor shares the demoralization of knowing Mama Ceal’s great-grandchildren must still grapple with too many race and equity challenges that she had to face. He asks, and the story how did this woman, who was devalued in American society, figure out how to make her small world better and stay hopeful for her family’s future?

“With This Leaves Me Okay, Pryor puts the reader into a rural corner of the deep South. There, like a time traveler, we accompany his grandmother Lucille through the Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and Civil Rights eras. We learn about what it means to be Black in White America from one determined Black woman who found the space to make a life for herself and a path that changed the lives of her descendants.”
—Eric Holder, co-author, Our Unfinished March, former U.S. Attorney General

“How extraordinarily lovely. The interweaving of memory, story, and social commentary is deftly achieved, and the handwritten letters carry a poignancy that makes me wish I had met Mama Ceal.”
— Stacey Abrams, author, Our Time is Now, lawyer, politician

“A rare offering of Black portraiture that is at once a finely quilted, poignant testimonial exposing the obscured dynamics of the American South through the intimately personal gaze of a grateful grandson. Touching, warm, tender, and thoughtful as a handwritten letter or a homemade quilt, This Leaves Me Okay will never leave you.”
—Saul Williams, poet, winner Sundance Festival Grand Jury Prize; Cannes Camera D'Or

“I’ve interviewed many folks about parenting, including Barack Obama—but oh, how I love the mothers and fathers in This Leaves Me Okay. I marvel at how these families, dealing with marginalization and few opportunities, found ways of coping and advancing by working together – all for the sake of their children. Pryor’s ‘jolie-laide’ story inspires.”
–Tatsha Robertson, co-author, The Unlocking the Secrets to Raising Highly Successful Children; editor-in-chief, The Root

216 pages, Paperback

Published May 8, 2025

Reviews

[Lisa Kennedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I heard the author speak in Little Rock and purchased the book at the event. I thoroughly enjoyed his family’s story. The book fleshed out what daily life was like in rural Arkansas for a widowed Black woman with only an 8th grade education. As with most things, Lucille’s life was nuanced. She lived in poverty and servitude, but was not poor in spirit. As ordinary as her life may have been at the time, Lucille was a remarkable woman and her legacy is inspiring.

The book also made me miss hand-written letters, which I was also fortunate to receive from my grandparents when I was in college and law school.

[Jennifer Maguire · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned a lot from this book. It was very moving.

[Betsy Starks · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this memoir because the author, Walter Pryor, the son-in-law of a good friend, gave a book talk and discussion in my community. He is an engaging speaker and this memoir tells the story of his grandmother and his mother. In my opinion, it needed a bit more editing, but Pryor is a fluent writer and his story is one of choices and sacrifices made for one’s descendants. Themes are family, racism, the importance of education, and setting goals.