I’m Down : A Memoir

I’m Down: A Memoir by Mishna Wolff. 2009.

Mishna grows up in a Black neighborhood in Seattle in the late 1970’s. While both her parents are white, her father impersonates Blackness and he encourages Mishna to belong by joining an all-Black basketball team even though she is unskilled. Mishna learns to navigate the neighborhood and how to use banter to make friends. When her parent divorce, Mishna attends a mostly white school and then her father re-marries, this time  a Black woman. Mishna is constantly navigating the race structures in American society and in this memoir, her experiences make the reader also wonder about these differences. This thoughtful story is humorous and sad.