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Overview
On the streets of Brooklyn in the 1970s, Veronica Chambers mastered the whirling helixes of a double-dutch jump rope with the same finesse she brought to her schoolwork, her often troubled family life, and the demands of being overachieving and underprivileged. Her mother—a Panamanian immigrant—was too often overwhelmed by the task of raising Veronica and her difficult younger brother on her meager secretary's salary to applaud her daughter's achievements. From an early age, Veronica understood that the best she could do for her mother was to be a perfect child—to rewrite her Christmas wish lists to her mother's budget, to look after her brother, to get by on her own.
Though her mother seemed to bear out the adage that "black women raise their daughters and mother their sons," Veronica never stopped trying to do more, do better, do it all. And now, as a successful young woman who's achieved more than her mother dared hope for her, she looks back on their mother-daughter bond. The critically acclaimed Mama's Girl is a moving, startlingly honest memoir, in which Chambers shares some important truths about what we all really want from our mothers—and what we can give in return.
Synopsis
Veronica Chambers grew up in Brooklyn in the 1970s, a girl who mastered the whirling helixes of double-dutch jump rope with the same ease and finesse she brought to her schoolwork, her often troubled family life, and the demands of being overachieving and underprivileged. "Until I was ten," she writes, "three things were true. We always had a car. We always had a backyard. And we lived with my father." Hard times set in when Veronica's father quit his job to become a full-time nightclub performer and soon after quit the family, too. The job of raising Veronica and her little brother, Malcolm X Chambers, was left exclusively to her mother, a Panamanian immigrant whose secretary's salary just barely met the needs of her family. From a young age, Veronica understood that the best she could do for her mother was to be a perfect child - to rewrite her Christmas wish lists to her mother's budget, to look after her difficult brother, to get by on her own. More than a family memoir, Mama's Girl gives voice to the first generation of African-Americans to come of age in the post-Civil Rights era.
Publishers Weekly
While billed as a memoir from the "post-civil rights generation," Chambers's remarkable story-told with admirable if sometimes frustrating control-is very much her own. If anything, it echoes the American stories of early European immigrants' children, though here the immigrants are blacks from the West Indies. Chambers grew up in Brooklyn in the 1970s, her mother enduring, her father violent and philandering. The marriage broke up. Cecilia Chambers downplayed her daughter's scholastic achievements, more worried about her struggling son, and never discussed sex. So the author absorbed the world on her own, in school, in the hair salon, ambitious to reap the opportunities black trailblazers had sown. A fight with her mother sent her to her father; there she survived a stepmother of fairy-tale cruelty and her dad's rage. She escaped, at 16, to Simon's Rock College in the Berkshires, where she learned to claim her black identity and was launched on a path of academic and professional success (including a stint as an editor of the New York Times Magazine). Chambers writes of a tender, belated rapprochement with her mother, and a daughter's gift-in money and support-that allows Cecilia to be finally "more than just coping." Some threads of Chambers's story, particularly the path of her imprisoned brother, are underdeveloped, but this remains an impressive debut, all the more so since the author is just 25. First serial to Glamour; BOMC alternate; author tour. (June)
Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
While billed as a memoir from the "post-civil rights generation," Chambers's remarkable story-told with admirable if sometimes frustrating control-is very much her own. If anything, it echoes the American stories of early European immigrants' children, though here the immigrants are blacks from the West Indies. Chambers grew up in Brooklyn in the 1970s, her mother enduring, her father violent and philandering. The marriage broke up. Cecilia Chambers downplayed her daughter's scholastic achievements, more worried about her struggling son, and never discussed sex. So the author absorbed the world on her own, in school, in the hair salon, ambitious to reap the opportunities black trailblazers had sown. A fight with her mother sent her to her father; there she survived a stepmother of fairy-tale cruelty and her dad's rage. She escaped, at 16, to Simon's Rock College in the Berkshires, where she learned to claim her black identity and was launched on a path of academic and professional success including a stint as an editor of the New York Times Magazine. Chambers writes of a tender, belated rapprochement with her mother, and a daughter's gift-in money and support-that allows Cecilia to be finally "more than just coping." Some threads of Chambers's story, particularly the path of her imprisoned brother, are underdeveloped, but this remains an impressive debut, all the more so since the author is just 25. First serial to Glamour; BOMC alternate; author tour. JuneLibrary Journal
Chambers, a contributing editor to Glamour magazine, presents an honest, open, and ultimately warm memoir of her relationship with her mother and of growing up African American in Brooklyn in the post-Civil Rights Seventies. The author reveals the harsh realities of her parents' and stepparents' physically and emotionally abusive behavior. However, she captures the reader's sympathies not by recounting negative circumstances but by stressing the need to rise above them and make one's own choices. A successful college student and career woman, Chambers embodies the triumphs of the Sixties' Civil Rights movementtriumphs that her mother believed in but never expected for herself and was scared to see in her daughter. By understanding her mother's fears, Chambers gently forced her to see life differently. Recommended for school and public libraries as well as academic libraries with comprehensive African American studies collections.Jeris Cassel, Rutgers Univ. Libs., New Brunswick, N.J.School Library Journal
YAA personal story of perseverance and achievement, this book is Chamber's self-examination as an African American woman. She fought the odds and has already succeeded far beyond the limits set for her by society and family. Her self-motivation was such that she constantly achieved academically in spite of moving from one school to another and coping with family abuse and lack of support for her educational goals. She graduated from college, secured internships with Sassy and Life magazines; she was chosen as one of Glamour magazine's Top Ten College Women of 1990. She is currently an editor of The New York Times magazine. Still in her 20s, this young woman has goals and dreams that she is still reaching in spite of growing up in severely dysfunctional family environments. Her autobiographical account reads beautifully and smoothly but far from easily as readers may keep asking themselves how this person was able to overcome so much in her life to attain such a high level of success at so young an age. Her story is not finished; her relationship with her mother is still evolving and maturing as she herself is becoming a fulfilled and contributing adult. Her early bitterness and anger toward her parents are mellowing into awareness and acceptance. A compelling, positive story for any collection serving YAs.Dottie Kraft, Fairfax County Public SchoolsKirkus Reviews
An absorbing, often perturbing chronicle of a young African- American woman's coming of age.Chambers, a contributing editor of Glamour (and formerly a contributor to Kirkus), offers a revealing glimpse into her youth as an overachiever among adults who dismiss or reject her. (Put into a special class for gifted children, Chambers eagerly reports the news to her mother, who responds with a flat, "That's nice.") There is little at first to distinguish her childhood from those of the many children of hard-working families living in Flatbush, Brooklyn, in the 1970s. A secretary, Veronica's mother, a Panamanian immigrant, returns home at day's end with barely enough energy to tend to her two children's needs. But then Chambers's father decides to act on his dream to become "the first famous black ventriloquist." He quits his job, is away for longer and longer periods of time, and finally abandons his wife and children. Things quickly fall apart. The family travels from Brooklyn to Los Angeles's South-Central district and back east. Chambers decides to live with her father when it becomes evident that her new stepfather cannot tolerate her. In a chilling series of episodes Chambers describes her stepmother's abuse and her father's remoteness. Despite her suffering, Chambers's mother never asks her to return home, though she does talk to her daughter almost every day. Admission to a private college in New England becomes the ambitious girl's salvation, and once on her own, she finds a way to reconcile with her mother. "In my mother's arms," she says, "I found healing." The author's brother does not fare as well, slipping into a hard, dangerous life on the streets.
This provocative memoir is valuable not only as a family chronicle, but as a commentary on growing up African-American and on the complex feelings that assail those who leave poverty behind and move into the middle class.