This is a delightful small memoir of the lives of two 100-year-old African-American sisters who suffered under Jim Crow and other repressive situations, yet managed to be college educated (one a dentist, the other a teacher) and homeowners.
These ladies are absolutely irrepressible! They say whatever they think. Such as: “You see, when you are colored, everyone is always looking for your faults. If you are going to make it, you have to be entirely honest, clean, brilliant, and so on. Because if you slip up once, the white folks say to each other ‘See, what’d I tell you,’ So you don’t have to be as good as white people, you have to be better or the best. When Negroes are average, they fail, unless they are very, very lucky. Now if you‘re average and white, honey, you can go far. Just look at Dan Quayle. If that boy was colored he’d be washing dishes somewhere.” and “It’s interesting the way folks have become interested in Malcolm X again. A lot of the things he said were true, but he said them so bluntly that white folks were scared to death of him. It was easier for white folks to admire Martin Luther King, because he was less threatening to them.” and “For instance, everybody knew that Nestle’s would hire Negroes, but Hershey’s wouldn’t once I had encountered that, I used to walk through Harlem and scold any Negro eating a Hershey bar. Usually, they would stop eating it, but sometimes they thought I was crazy. Well honey, I do not allow Hershey candy in my home to this day.”
A quick read. I would have given the book a 4 1/2 had the site had that capacity. Highly recommended.