Mishna Wolff’s childhood observations of how her white father could so seamlessly assimilate with his black friends and their black culture makes perfect sense to me. It’s what most people do. We strive to blend in with our surroundings. We try to fit in. We try to be like, and learn from, those who accept us. A young Mishna doesn’t understand this. Doesn’t understand the divide between blacks and whites that some of her black peers are familiar with; doesn’t understand the interconnectedness of race and class. The ways in which members of a community bound by class might only rub elbows up to a certain point due to the limitations of stereotypical notions of race.
Class brings groups of people together. Sometimes the walls of race come down as people recognize their neighbor’s similar struggles, needs for connection, basic humanity. There is no way you can talk about race without observing class and bringing socioeconomics into the discussion. There is no way you can talk about the things that marginalized folks lack, or have, without talking about the things whites have, or lack.
In I’m Down, Mishna Wolff lays it all out. Her desire to escape her origins for a better life are natural—not mean. Her conflicted perspectives of her father, who has totally immersed himself in black culture as if he were a black man, are genuine. I am addressing critiques of the book when I say that I do not believe she has played up her father for laughs at the expense of Black culture. She may not fully understand why her father is who is, and her father might not fully grasp why he is who he is, but the psychology of that is not necessarily what the memoir is about.
One could argue that Wolff’s observations of her wealthy white classmates’ family issues are superficial when compared to her presentation and analysis of her own mixed family’s lives. And one could wonder why unlike Mishna’s father and younger sister, she has had to work so hard to fit into her primarily African American community.
I enjoyed this book. Wolff’s acerbic wit helped me navigate her journey through a rough childhood. Broken family, struggling father, social anxieties, sibling rivalry, lower class income, racial tensions—all of it bigger than her and what she could understand but had to figure out and deal with daily at a very young age.
I’m Down reminded me of Dalton Conley’s memoir titled Honky. I think anyone who has grown up in an urban setting where race intertwines more than it does in the suburbs of America will enjoy I’m Down, and that anyone who hasn’t should read the book regardless.
The book is about identity, and we really cannot get at that without confronting race and class. I rated it five stars.
