The Hottest Water in Chicago: Notes of a Native Daughter

by Gayle Pemberton

An illuminating cultural journey through black and white America.

Gayle Pemberton shares the accumulated revelations of a lifetime of observation in sixteen provocative autobiographical essays, interweaving her own history and that of her family with reflections on American literature, art, music, and film. Building on the tradition of such writers as W.E.B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, and Ralph Ellison, but with a wisdom and sharp wit uniquely her own, Pemberton moves from the integration of a transient hotel in Chicago to a party on that city's Gold Coast; from journeys by train and the memories they provoke to reflections on race aboard ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean; from the Mickey Mouse Club to the ghost of Emmett Till; from Harvard to Hollywood.

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, Memoir

280 pages, Paperback

First published May 7, 1992

Reviews

[Tana · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my first time reading Gayle Pemberton, and I love her. It was difficult to put down. Pemberton has a way of making her reader uncomfortably familiar with her personal experiences. She uses these experiences to comment on issues of race, gender, class, and relationships (familial and intimate). This is the way memoir should be done.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

While some of these essays drew me in and made me laugh out loud, overall a little above my pay-grade.