Ace of Spades: A Memoir

by David Matthews

A take-no-prisoners tale of growing up without knowing who you are


When David Matthews's mother abandoned him as an infant, she left him with white skin and the rumor that he might be half Jewish. For the next twenty years, he would be torn between his actual life as a black boy in the ghetto of 1980s Baltimore and a largely imagined world of white privilege.
 
While his father, a black activist who counted Malcolm X among his friends, worked long hours as managing editor at the Baltimore Afro-American, David spent his early years escaping wicked-stepmother types and nursing an eleven-hour-a-day TV habit alongside his grandmother in her old-folks-home apartment. In Reagan-era America, there was no box marked "Other," no multiculturalism or self-serving political correctness, only a young boy's need to make it in a clearly segregated world where white meant "have" and black meant "have not." Without particular allegiance to either, David careened in and out of community college, dead-end jobs, his father's life, and girls' pants.
 
A bracing yet hilarious reinvention of the American story of passing, Ace of Spades marks the debut of an irresistible and fiercely original new voice.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography Memoir, African American, Memoir

320 pages, Hardcover

First published February 6, 2007

Reviews

[Sharon · Rating 1 out of 5]

CW: racism, racial slurs, antisemitism, classism, parental abandonment, rape, child abuse, child death, gun violence

Additional CW about this review: Contains direct quotes about instances of sexual violence committed/fantasized about by the author! Read at your discretion.

I don't think it's my place, as a mostly Ashkenazi, raised Jewish person, to police how a biracial person talks about their disconnect and struggle from Judaism, but I did not enjoy the experience of this book. Matthews does, though, espouse some particularly antisemitic language on pages 269 through 272.
I also think it's a great time to once again plug what I personally believe to be a life-changing Zine "The Past Didn't Go Anywhere".

However, it is my place to comment on the rape!! Because that's what he confesses to on page 254!!!
"...I fuck her with a condom, whose wrapper center, moments before, and unseen by her, I have pierced with a fine sewing needle. You always remember your first."
Fun fact! Purposefully putting a hole in a condom is rape! Why would you write that in a fucking book? 🙃🙃🙃
Additionally, I do understand the inclusion of "you always remember your first" is a nod to remembering the first person you ever have sex with, but following Matthews' previous statements, it sounds more like he has raped multiple sexual partners. Which is then followed up on page 258 by imaging raping a child

Regardless of my feelings on Matthews own language surrounding Judaism, he has openly admitted to committing rape in his memoir and we do not support rapists or people who commit sexual assault in this house. 1 star.

[Demetria · Rating 4 out of 5]

This memoir by David Matthews is fascinating. The idea of "passing" is so Harlem Renaissance (and earlier) era to me that it is just mind-boggling to read about a man in his early forties who spent the first 20 or so years of his life passing as a Jewish man. David Matthews has a black father and a Jewish mother. His appearance would lead one to believe he is just another nice Jewish boy or perhaps someone with a little Middle Eastern flavor in there somewhere.

His memoir lets readers peek into his insane journey from hater of all things black to uber militant black man to something somewhere in the middle. The narrative voice in this book is very engaging and Matthews has a knack for finding the little things in a scene that really put the reader in the moment.

My biggest gripe with this book is the part where he fantasizes about raping a little white girl because she called him a n*gger. He was a grown man at the time. He takes like a paragraph to explain how he wanted to rape the poor child in front of her whole family, first gently then rough. WHAT??? I seriously do not understand that part at all. Normal or even close to normal people do not have such thoughts (not that he claims to be normal). That's just extra sick. I hope I am missing something about that paragraph and it just means something that's going way over my head.

Also, Matthews uses footnotes pretty frequently. The information in the footnotes is almost always witty and informative, but I got sick of stopping to read the footnotes after a while.

Over all, this is well-written work with an interesting narrative voice.

[Tammy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Challenging in more than one way, this smart memoir will keep you searching for your racial identity as well as your dictionary. It's smart, insightful, and really fun. Matthews talks about growing up in the "ghetto" of Baltimore, with a black father, absentee white Jewish mother, while he "passes" throughout his childhood and adolescence. Add in a best friend who acts like a European Shaft, and you have an awesome memoir. Not the easiest book to read at times, but definitely worthwhile. I feel like it increased my vocabulary!

[Straw · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really interesting book about what it means to grow up as a mixed race child forced to choose sides. The author grew up in Baltimore during the 70's and 80's with his activist father and without a mentally ill mother that abandoned him within months. He definitely passes as white and uses all that privilege to deny the other parts of himself. I read this in an evening.

[Henry · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book to be profoundly affecting. There's a lot going on, and it's about much, much more than race--it's really a classic coming of age story with racial identity as a framework. The writing is powerful and elegant, and definitely challenged me beyond most of the memoirs I've come across, which seem to be written by non-writers with a story to tell. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but this is definitely a fascinating story told by a writer, first and foremost. I read it in an evening, and even though I didn't agree with everything Matthews had to say--I foud myself thinking of scenes in the book, and even sentences, over the next few weeks, something memoirs rarely leave with me. Can't recommend highly enough, but again, it is challenging and almost brutally honest (really, really funny in places, tho) so it may not be for those who like their coffee with lots of cream and sugar.

[Jo · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel like over the years I've read a lot of growing up biracial memoirs. This one has some serious spunk though. I liked the writing style as it was personal. It really connected me to the author. He was not afraid to admit to his mistakes. He really challenges himself and his understanding of himself in the context of growing up torn between two races in a culture and time when your race is so critically important. (The story took place in Baltimore, which I also liked. I haven't been much outside of the Inner Harbor which isn't 'real' in many ways, but I still feel a strong connection to that community.) Through out his childhood, he valued the white side even through it came from a mother that abandoned him as an infant. Most of the book is about him hiding from the black side of his self. However, the end pulls it together into a somewhat academic understanding of 'racism' and a quick search for his mother.

[Kyla · Rating 4 out of 5]

No holds barred, unpitying, un-PC...sounds like negatives but these qualities ensure this memoir is not another mamby-pamby "how we are all one and I learned to love my mixed race heritage". Told from his perspective growing up half-black, half-white but "passing" for white while living with his African-American Dad who wrote for one of the more venerable AA newspapers. In Baltimore, on the edge of the ghettos. Made me revisit and rethink the process of creating your identity without ever using the words "process" or "identity". Plus he makes asides, including one about sharing a name with a "South African minstrel and his jam band".

[Jenn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brutal look at growing up in a society which defines identity through race.

[Sara Calzone · Rating 3 out of 5]

“I wanted to be black- charred black as
pitch so there could be no doubt; then America would have to confront me, fear me, let me revivify myself and my wounded spirit on poisoned grains; my blackness unequivocal, i would become a potent figure, a black gloved fist raised in in triumph at the Olympics, a menacing reminder of America's failures, a man apart, having risen from the obvious handicap of my skin, a kind of triumph in that.”

[Katie Blakey · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm pretty conflicted about this book. The writing style seems really uneven, with some passages being extremely dense and full of challenging vocabulary, followed by sentences that are intentionally dumbed down in an effort to be snappy. However, things even out by the end.

His descriptions of trying (and usually succeeding) to pass as white were really interesting and upsetting at once. Without having had to live in that position, it's difficult to empathize with the author as, aside from when he's a small child, he is fairly unlikeable. He seems to hate, envy, or resent most of the people in his life. Another reviewer referred to it as "angry-guy lit," and it definitely comes across as such for large portions of the book.

The part of it I dislike most, though, is the way he talks about women. Halfway through the book, he flat out says that, because he was abandoned by his mother, he sees women as objects. His saying this does not make the following passages any easier to read. Every woman not related to him by blood is sexualized (including a few ten-year-oldish girls he describes from an incident when he was maybe 8 -- it's the adult author making the description, not the kid living the experience), and women seem to take the brunt of his anger toward other men and toward white America. Much of it smacks of "nice guy" bull, and nearly made me abandon the book.

All that said, I nearly started crying at the end, which was incredibly and unexpectedly touching.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am too tired of angry-guy lit to have taken this book seriously. There was a story here worth telling, and some important lessons to be learned, but they were so deeply buried in an unsound text that it almost wasn't worth trying to ferret them out.

However, if you are find with angry-guy lit, you may be able to get something out of this text I could not.

[Leah · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a good avoiding-schoolwork book. I didn't hate it enough to put it down. But it's also not particularly good. I didn't like his tone...and he has all these annoying comments in footnotes....

[Kate Levin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This guy's obsessed with his dick. And there's some narrative gimmickry going on in this memoir that I didn't like. But I appreciated his honesty, his humor at times, and his portrayal of his relationship with his father. Strangely there was a lot in this book that resonated with me.

[Chechen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good book about racism. This is about a growing boy torn up between being a white or a black. Since having the traits of both, his father a black and his mother a white, David Matthews shares his struggles in coping up in a place where identity is is crucially important and a liability.

[Angela]

i found it in the library on the ship

[Jessica Sibayan]

wonderful!

[Ashley · Rating 1 out of 5]

I cringed during this entire book. From the writing style to the content it was just painful. This book was filled with bitching and moaning and self diagnosis.