I’m Down

Publishers Weekly

Humorist and former model Wolff details her childhood growing up in an all-black Seattle neighborhood with a white father who wanted to be black in this amusing memoir. Wolff never quite fit in with the neighborhood kids, despite her father's urgings that she make friends with the "sisters" on the block. Her father was raised in a similar neighborhood and-after a brief stint as a hippie in Vermont-returned to Seattle and settled into life as a self-proclaimed black man. Wolff and her younger, more outgoing sister, Anora, are taught to embrace all things black, just like their father and his string of black girlfriends. Just as Wolff finds her footing in the local elementary school (after having mastered the art of "capping": think "yo mama" jokes), her mother, recently divorced from her father and living as a Buddhist, decides to enroll Wolff in the Individual Progress Program, a school for gifted children. Once again, Wolff finds herself the outcast among the wealthy white kids who own horses and take lavish vacations. While Wolff is adept at balancing humorous memories with more poignant moments of a daughter trying to earn her father's admiration, the result is more a series of vignettes than a cohesive memoir. (June)

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School Library Journal

Adult/High School

In a memoir that is frequently hilarious, occasionally terrifying, and ultimately bittersweet, Wolff forces readers to consider whether racial identity is the result of nature, derived through nurture, or constructed and reconstructed throughout life. The author was born to white parents and raised into early adolescence mostly by her father, a man who worked harder to remake his own and his children's identities as black than he did at earning a living. From early childhood she tried hard to sort through evidence of her own sense of self and belonging: rougher kids in their working-class black Seattle neighborhood rejected her while adoring her younger (equally white) sister; other black kids accepted her as an equal or pitied her confusion; her father's second wife (black) rejected her cruelly; and her mother was willing to take her in but not to confront her former husband's careless child rearing. When her mother enrolled her in a public school program for intellectually gifted children, Wolff had to accommodate her worldview to take into account her classmates' relative wealth and mindless racism. Father and daughter eventually found a bridge through sports, but this rapprochement was made possible as much by the author's maturing emotional health as by her father's realization that he risked losing her. Wolff writes fluidly and offers moments of great insight through story rather than through explanation, making it easy for readers to engage with the child's questions and growing frustrations. An excellent choice for discussion in ethnic identity curricula, but absorbing reading, too.-Francisca Goldsmith, Halifax Public Libraries, Nova Scotia

Kirkus Reviews

A humorist and former model recalls growing up gifted and white in a poor, predominantly black neighborhood. In the early 1970s, Wolff and her parents, all Caucasian, moved back to her father's childhood neighborhood, Rainier Valley in south Seattle. The neighborhood had changed from white to black, and her father decided that the family should be black too. "He strutted around with a short perm, a Cosby-esque sweater, gold chains, and a Kangol," writes the author, "telling jokes like Redd Fox and giving advice like Jesse Jackson." Wolff's mother soon tired of the project and divorced her father. At age seven or eight, Wolff says, she was terrible at acting black, and she became a source of constant irritation and disappointment to her father. She could not dance, sing or even jump rope, and she displayed weakness in a tough neighborhood. Just as she discovered she was good at something black-rapid-fire insults along the lines of "Your mama's so fat . . . " or "You're so ugly . . . "-her mother transferred her to a school for gifted children (all of them white and rich). So started Wolff's perilous journey of self-identity. The blackness of her neighborhood only made her feel out of place at school, and the whiteness of her school only alienated her from her father and the black woman he married, to the point where she moved out to live with her mother. By age 12 she was a mess, suffering from insomnia, migraines and a deep anxiety that she would always be poor and never have "a lucrative anesthesia practice like all my friends." Over time, Wolff found some balance. Even her father, in a lovingly told final episode, gave her what she most wanted-his acceptance. Deftly and hilariouslydelineates the American drama of race and class for one little girl. Agent: Erin Hosier/Dunow, Carlson & Lerner

From the Publisher

“This buoyant memoir is rich in detail but never feels over embellished…I’m Down certainly has serious thoughts on its mind (Wolff actually grew up quite poor and hungry), but the tone manages to be light and triumphant because of the hilarious child-goggles Wolff wears while spinning her tales. Rating: A” --Entertainment Weekly

“An authentically funny, truly transcendent work that makes other, sorry-voiced memoirs by a certain more privileged class of writer pale—pun intended—by comparison…Wolff’s focus, and the sweet soul of this terrific book, was on being accepted by her streetwise, wiseass dad, whom she knew loved her—and whom she loved—unequivocally.—Elle Magazine

“As she tells you at the outset of I’m Down, Mishna Wolff is all white—nothing remarkable, except that her way cool father, “Wolfy,” thinks he’s black (he’s not). What follows is a funny-melancholy coming of age memoir [in which] Mishna searches for identity in her broken home, her snobby, mostly white prep school, and—most restrictive of all—her longing heart.” –O Magazine

"Deftly and hilariously delineates the American drama of race and class for one little girl." --Kirkus Reviews

"Mishna Wolff was a white girl who grew up in a poor black neighborhood. This funny, engaging, and perceptive memoir tells the story of how she managed to negotiate these two very different worlds, and emerge with her sanity--and identity--intact." –Tom Perrotta, author of Little Children and The Abstinence Teacher

“And you thought you had a hard time fitting in when you were growing up? Try on Mishna Wolff's bizarre childhood for size…I’m Down explodes racial and cultural stereotypes with self-deprecating wit, wry humor and keen observation.” –Janelle Brown, author of All We Ever Wanted Was Everything

“In a parallel universe - one, say, where Richard Pryor could be merged with Mark Twain and re- born with two x-chromosomes - the result would probably be Mishna Wolff. And her memoir, I have no doubt, would be as beautiful, funny, touching and irresistible as I'm Down. “ --Jerry Stahl, author of Permanent Midnight and Pain Killers.

“Hilarious and sometimes tragic, Mishna Wolff's book is the expertly woven tale of a girl caught between two lives, two races, and two classes. “ –Christian Lander, author of Stuff White People Like

“A really, really funny book about the slings and arrows of growing up, of being a kid, of figuring out where you belong, of figuring IT out. The royal IT. Mishna's writing is fast, hip, edgy and so funny.” –Michael Showalter, comedian and actor (The State and Wet Hot American Summer)

“Hilarious, bittersweet, and full of soul (in every sense of the word).” –Wendy McClure, author of I’m Not The New Me