The Grace of Silence: A Memoir

“An insightful, elegant rendering of how the history of an American family illuminates the history of our country.”xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0—Toni Morrison“A riveting, inspiring memoir of an at once singular and representative American family. Norris takes us on a painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. She relies on her formidable skills as an investigative reporter to unearth shocking family secrets kept from her by her father and mother when she was growing up. Feeling hurt and betrayed, she learns that their lack of forthrightness allowed her to rise in a country haunted by its racial past. Powerful and tender, The Grace of Silence reveals our human complexity in exemplary fashion.”xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0—Henry Louis Gates, Jr., University Professor and Director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute, Harvard University, and author of Colored People “History at its best is about telling stories—stories about people who lived before, about events in the past that create the contours of the present…In the hands of a gifted storyteller, a memoir becomes more than a chronicle of the writer’s life. It becomes the history of a time and a place. So it is with this magnificent memoir—one of the most eloquent, moving and insightful memoirs I have ever read.”xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0 —Doris Kearns Goodwin, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and author of the New York Times bestseller Team of Rivals “Michele Norris takes us on a riveting personal journey from north to south and back again through the tangled landscape of race in America—and teaches anew about the pain and possibilities of our past and future.”xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0... From Publishers Weekly In this eloquent and affecting memoir, Norris, co-host of NPR's All Things Considered, examines both her family's racial roots and secrets. Spurred on by Barack Obama's campaign and a multipart NPR piece she spearheaded about race relations in America, Norris realized that she couldn't fully understand how other people talked about race until she understood how her own family dealt with it, particularly with their silence regarding two key events. She intersperses memories of her Minneapolis childhood with the events that shaped her parents' lives: her maternal grandmother's short career as a traveling "Aunt Jemima," which always embarrassed her mother, and her father's shooting by a white policeman in Alabama in 1946. It is the shooting, which occurred soon after Belvin Norris Jr. was honorably discharged from the navy, that forms the narrative and emotional backbone of Norris's story, as she travels to Birmingham to try and piece together what happened. Though the quest is a personal one, Norris poignantly illuminates the struggle of black veterans returning home and receiving nothing but condemnation for their service. The issue of race in America is the subject of an ongoing conversation, and Norris never shies away from asking the same difficult questions of herself that she asks of others because "all of us should be willing to remain at the table even when things get uncomfortable." Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Booklist *Starred Review* Lauded journalist Norris, cohost for All Things Considered on NPR, intended to write a book analyzing the changing conversation about race in the Obama era. But once she realized that even within her own family, discussions about race were “not completely honest,” she changed course. The result is an investigative family memoir of rare candor and artistry that dramatically reveals essential yet hidden aspects of African American life. A fifth-generation Minnesotan on her mother’s side, Norris was stunned to learn that her maternal grandmother worked for Quaker Oats as a traveling Aunt Jemima, a revelation that sparks a paramount interpretation of this loaded icon. The next shock was discovering that when her father returned to Birmingham, Alabama, after serving in WWII, he was shot by a white policeman. This painful secret inspires a commanding exposé of the “scandalous violence against black men who had fought for human rights abroad” only to be denied freedom at home. A balance-beam writer, Norris looks at both sides of every question while seeking truth’s razor-edge. But she is also a remarkably warm, witty, and spellbinding storyteller, enriching her illuminating family chronicle with profound understanding of the protective “grace of silence” and the powers unchained when, at last, all that has been unsaid is finally spoken. --Donna Seaman --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Michele Norris , host of All Things Considered, is cowinner of the Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award for The York Project: Race and the ‘08 Vote and was chosen in 2009 as Journalist of the Year by the National Association of Black Journalists. She has written for, among other publications, The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times. As a correspondent for ABC News from 1993 to 2002, she earned Emmy and Peabody awards for her contribution to the network’s 9/11 reporting. She has been a frequent guest commentator on Meet the Press, The Chris Matthews Show, and Charlie Rose. Norris lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and children. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Daddy My father was one of those people who are most comfortxadable at the fringes, away from the action center stage. He did not need or crave attention. Instead, he was driven by the need to reassure others that everything was going to be all right. Belvin Norris Jr. was a fixer. An eternal optimist to the core. You could see it in his smile. As a grown man he still grinned like a schoolboy, and you could not help but grin along with him. His vibe was contagious. Kindness is usually seen as altruxadistic. But it can also be an act of desperation, satisfying a deep-seated need to avoid the mind’s darker places. Benevolence, for some, is a survival tactic. xa0Even in his last hours my father practiced benevolence, always looking out for everybody else. Moments after the doctor delivered devastating news about his health, my father, still smiling, pointed to an infected cut on my left hand. It was his way of prodding the emergency room physician to turn his attention to me. The victim opting to be the benefactor. xa0Dad took ill in June 1988, while visiting his brother Simpson in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The minute he called me I knew somexadthing awful had happened. His voice was graveled, his words rubbery. He couldn’t put a sentence together, and the failed effort only added to his frustration. He had lost control of his speech, but he managed to hold on to his sunny disposition. Although his words were incomprehensible, I sensed a false cheer, with each attempt at speech ending on an elevated note—the kind of verbal leap parents of very young children use to mask irritation or fear. xa0I was working as a newspaper reporter in Chicago at the time. Dad had stopped by to visit me on his way to Uncle Simpson’s house. We had spent a few days going to baseball games and trying to get my kitchen in order. He was relieved to see that I’d finally learned to enjoy spending time at the stove. I showed off for him with jambalaya and pineapple upside-down cake. It worked. He set small talk aside, went back for seconds, and still had room for a huge piece of cake. When he was finxadished he dabbed his mouth and said, “Maybe now you’ll find someone who will put up with you.” xa0To another person, this might have sounded like a dig, but I knew what he meant. I could use my kitchen skills to cook at home and save money and to help “close the deal” when I found the right man. I was twenty-six and living on my own in Chicago. No husband. No roommate. Just me in a second-story duplex apartment with high ceilings, a large kitchen, and actual furniture. For years my father had visited me at various apartxadments where the most comfortable chair had been either a wooden crate or something recovered from the curb on trash day. He never let me forget an embarrassing episode when I was living in southern California. A neighbor stopped by my Manxadhattan Beach apartment to borrow a coffee filter one Saturday morning. She couldn’t stop staring at the wingback armchair in which my father sat reading the Los Angeles Times. “You know, Michele,” she said, “that looks like the chair I threw out for bulk trash pickup a few weeks ago.” xa0My neighbor left with her borrowed coffee filter and a piece of my dignity. Lucky for me, my father had a sense of humor and a strong commitment to thrift. He always believed that the prettiest car on the road was the one that was paid in full, and in his book the most attractive chair in my cramped living room that day was the one that had arrived without a price tag. We had a good laugh, and when he left, he snuck an envelope into my jewelry box with “sofa fund” written on the outside. xa0My father preached that he would always help me as long as I helped myself by working hard and spending smart. I was better at the former than the latter. When he visited me in Chicago in June 1988, he saw that I had earned high marks on both fronts. He appeared healthy during that visit. A week later, when I got the call from Indiana, it seemed I was talking to a man I didn’t know. As soon as I put the phone down, I started packing a bag. I had to get to Fort Wayne fast. By the time I arrived, Dad had already checked into the hospital. The docxadtors there didn’t know exactly what was wrong, but they knew that something was very wrong and that most likely it had to do with his brain or his central nervous system. The doctors spoke among themselves about anaplastic astrocytomas and radiation therapy. It was a code that could mean only one thing: cancer. xa0Even in the most terrifying moments at a sterile hospital, there is some comfort in knowing that a world you recognize is just outside and beyond the parking garage. You can fixate on a familiar image as a doctor shaves years off your life with each sentence. He can talk all he wants about therapies and operaxadtions, but you’re thinking of the parking lot where you taught your daughter to drive, or the gas station that uses red reflective press-on letters to spell out a different Bible verse each week, like “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” While the doctor yammers on, you’re thinking of the grizzled gas staxadtion attendant who climbs the ladder to change the sign, and wondering what pearl of wisdom he might offer in light of the news you just got. xa0In Fort Wayne, in a large hospital in an unfamiliar city, we were confronting an unknown illness that had swiftly robbed my father of his ability to carry out the most basic functions. We were looking at complicated surgery and, at best, a long and complex recovery, so the doctors suggested that we quickly move Dad back to Minnesota, where he could be treated closer to home. xa0We wanted to get Dad on the first flight to the Twin Cities, but his gait was unsteady and he seemed increasingly disorixadented. He clutched my arm as we walked through the airport; he kept shooting me tight little smiles: reassurance. I wasn’t buying it. By now his speech was so slurred that only I could understand him, and so labored that he wasn’t able even to whisper. It took him so much effort and focus to spit out a sound that it was slightly explosive when it arrived, like a sputxadtering engine in a hushed area. xa0At the airport we sat across from two stout middle-aged blond women with wet-set curls and matching pink satin jackxadets. They must have been on their way to a convention or a soxadrority gathering; they were electric with excitement and frosted up like high-calorie confections, constantly rifling through their pocketbooks for mirrored compacts, then checking their makeup or blotting their lipstick. I remember them so well because they were sitting next to a large Amish or Mennonite family. xa0The men had long beards and wore suspenders. The women had long braids and long dresses, and their heads were covered by little white hats that looked like fancy French fry baskets. They seemed uncomfortable with the constant chatter of the satin dolls. They, too, noticed the women’s prying eyes and “get a load of this” gestures, though the taciturn demeanor of the Amish rendered them perhaps slightly less interesting specixadmens than Dad and me. xa0When my dad tried to lean toward me to ask a question, his words sputtered forth like bricks tumbling from a shelf. The satin dolls found it hard to mind their own business. They stared and pointed every time Dad attempted to speak. They didn’t try to hide their disparagement, one of them harrumphxading loud enough for anyone to hear, “Goodness sakes, it’s not even noon yet!” xa0After spending a lifetime trying to be a model minority— one of the few black men in his neighborhood, at his workplace, or on his daughters’ school committees—my father now sat facing the condemnation of the two blond scolds. They had apparently concluded that he was an early morning lush instead of a gray-haired man fighting a losing battle with a devastating disease. xa0Here is the conundrum of racism. You know it’s there, but you can’t prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, how it colors a parxadticular situation. Those pink satin ladies were strangers to me, so I have no idea if they would have been as quick to judge a gray-haired white man with impaired speech. However, I do know this: the fact that they were white women added mightily to my father’s humiliation. I knew my father felt the sting of their judgment. I knew it because he kept pushing up his cardixadgan sleeve and futzing with his wrist, as if he’d left home withxadout his Timex. But it was not the wrist on which he wore his windup watch. It was the wrist where the plastic bracelet had been affixed at the hospital. His awkward gestures were a silent plea to the satin dolls to notice the hospital bracelet. My heart breaks every time I think of the look on his face that day. xa0The jut of his chin showed indignation, but the sag of his shoulders and the crease in his brow conveyed something difxadferent. Something hovering between anger and shame. There was also, however, a hint of grace. I see that now that I have come to understand my father better, as a man who was always in tight control of his emotions. I believe now that he was trying not just to salvage his dignity but also to absolve the two women from dishonor. A less controlled, more impulsive man might have responded by giving those women the finger to shut them up. My father drew strength from reaching past anger. xa0The aphorism “Kill them with kindness” might have been penned with a man like Belvin Norris Jr. in mind. By fiddling with his wrist he was saying, “If only they knew,” rather than “Shame on you.” xa0Dad boarded the plane early because the flight crew knew he would need extra time to settle into his seat and because they wanted to check his medical release from the hospital. He was flying alone that morning. I planned to drive his Oldsmobile back to Minneapolis and meet him there the next morning, a decision I have spent a lifetime regretting. Before walking down the jetway, he motioned for the nurse and the flight crew to wait a second. He leaned toward me as if he wanted to tell me something, but he couldn’t get words out. He kept looking over his shoulder, aware of the flight crew watching and waiting, and perhaps wondering whether the satin dolls were also taking it all in. He kissed me on the cheek, a loving but clumsy gesture. His balance was off, so it was almost as if we were bumpxading heads. I didn’t mind, and I certainly didn’t care who was watching as we locked in a long embrace. My eyes were closed, fighting back tears, so I barely noticed when the flight attendant crept into our circle of grief to gently remind us that they had to stay on schedule. The attendant lightly cupped my father’s elbow and led him away. It is disturbing to see your parent treated like a schoolchild, yet amusing to watch a man grin like a lucky teenager when a pretty woman takes his arm. xa0As I walked away, the satin dolls gazed at me. They must have overheard the chat about Dad’s medical release because now they wore pouty, ingratiating smiles. Lipstick contrition. I walked past them and smiled back. It hurts to recall my rexadsponse; I, like my father, had reached beyond anger to offer conciliation instead. I had every right to throw my father’s humiliation in their faces. Spitting at them was, of course, out of bounds, but at the very least I should have served up a scowl. xa0I should have made them squirm. I should have been the black girl that certain white women are conditioned to fear most. xa0I didn’t do any of that. I am my father’s daughter, and such caustic gestures weren’t in my DNA. I was raised by a model minority to be a model minority, and to achieve that status, cerxadtain impulses had to be suppressed. Years later, I understand both the reason and its consequence. xa0I was almost out of the waiting area when I felt someone touch my shoulder. I turned, thinking it might be one of the women, intent on apologizing, but there was no nail polish on the hand touching my arm. The hand was large and calloused, marked by raised splotches resembling coffee stains. A bearded man held my forearm; he called me “ma’am,” though it sounded like “Mom.” “I’ll watch over your pa,” he said before darting back to join his family. xa0I wonder what my father had wanted to tell me, but couldn’t, right before he’d boarded the plane. More of his classic lunch-box wisdom? “Learn all you can” or “Save your money” or “Don’t eat too much late at night”? More than twenty years later, as still I mourn, I wonder if he was trying to impart some eternal verity before his final flight home to Minneapolis. This would be the last time I saw him alert. Within a day Dad slipped into a coma. Within a week a fast-growing brain tumor took his life. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From AudioFile NPR reporter Michelle Norris adeptly blends the personal, the journalistic, and the scholarly. She uses family experiences as starting points to investigate topics such as police violence in Birmingham and the image of Aunt Jemima. She brings both the intimate and the dry alive with a versatile voice that gives insight into the characters of the people she has talked with and studied. Her emotion brings alive her father's grace in illness and her mother's reaction to white flight. The book hits hardest in its chapters about Birmingham. There she researches the incident in which her father was shot by police, visits a now-dilapidated black neighborhood, and considers attitudes past and present toward race. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. “An insightful, elegant rendering of how the history of an American family illuminates the history of our country.” –Toni Morrison“Exquisite. . . [A] rich account of family history.” – Seattle Times “Powerful and heartbreaking. . . . [Norris] explores race within her family history while tracing its complex legacy in the United States.” – San Francisco Chronicle “A riveting, inspiring memoir of an at once singular and representative American family. Norris takes us on a painful yet triumphant journey of self-discovery. . . . Powerful and tender, The Grace of Silence reveals our human complexity in exemplary fashion.” –Henry Louis Gates, Jr., University Professor and Director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute, Harvard University, and author of Colored People “A deeply personal reflection on what her parents and grandparents did and did not tell her about her history and identity as a black woman. . . . A fresh and candid reflection on this most important conversation.”xa0 — Minneapolis Star Tribune “Gracefully written and carefully researched, it offers up long-buried family secrets as a testimony to racism’s power and reach.” — Los Angeles Times “A powerful plea to readers to doggedly pursue their families’ story lines. She reminds us that speaking candidly about race in America starts not at the president’s teleprompter but at our own dinner tables.” — The Washington Post “An open and honest examination of race relations in her family’s and the country’s past.” — Chicago Tribune “Jaw-dropping. Can’t put down. . . . Riveting. . . . [Norris] uses her signature calm and steady voice to open up about her complicated relatives.” — Essence “A revealing, affectionate and sometimes painful memoir which dispenses with stereotype to get to the heart of what makes a family.” —Gwen Ifill, Moderator, “Washington Week,” PBS“With learned candor, [Norris] describes the corrosive effect of family stories left untold. . . . We may not hear those stories until we ask for them. But some things simply must be said.” — Ms. “Revelatory, heart-piercing.” — The Baltimore Sun “In the hands of a gifted storyteller, a memoir becomes more than a chronicle of the writer’s life. It becomes the history of a time and a place. So it is with this magnificent memoir—one of the most eloquent, moving and insightful memoirs I have ever read.”xa0 —Doris Kearns Goodwin, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and author of the New York Times bestseller Team of Rivals “Letter-perfect, beguiling. . . . Powerful. . . . Her well rounded view of the world demonstrates wisdom given by her strong, intelligent mother and her hard-working, proud father.” — Louisville Courier-Journal “Michele Norris takes us on a riveting personal journey from north to south and back again through the tangled landscape of race in America—and teaches anew about the pain and possibilities of our past and future.” —Tom Brokaw, author of New York Times bestsellers The Greatest Generation and Boom --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. Read more