Critically acclaimed novelist Jim Grimsley looks back at the federally mandated racial integration of his school in 1966, remembering his own first real encounters with black children and their culture. The result is a true and moving personal narrative of race relations.
. . . Good people taught and still teach racism to their children without a second thought. This was true in the South of my birth and remains so to the present . . . We teach that God created the races to be separate from one another for a purpose, and we preach that this purpose cannot be to mix, because why then would He have created the separation in the first place? We teach that when people are different from each other, one is better and the other worse . . . We teach that black and white are not simply different but opposite. —from How I Shed My Skin
“Race has been at the forefront of the national conversation . . . The country is discussing how far we still have to go. How I Shed My Skin, by Jim Grimsley, is a white writer’s story of that journey—where we’ve come from and how we move forward.” —The Washington Post
“Grimsley says, ‘I was a good little racist’ . . . It’s the defining moment in Grimsley’s new memoir about desegregation, a day when he sensed that everything he’d been taught about black people was wrong.” —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Powerful . . . Grimsley’s brave self-examination of his own childhood prejudices makes this book personal; his struggle to reconcile and overcome those prejudices makes it universal.” —Birmingham magazine
“Grimsley impersonates his younger self with great skill and delicacy . . . He doesn’t pretend that simply sitting next to black classmates suddenly changed his way of looking at the world . . . The process occurred over many years and much searching.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Eloquent, moving . . . A welcome addition to our constant, ever-evolving conversation on race.” —Atlanta magazine
“Grimsley impersonates his younger self with great skill and delicacy. His voice is finely calibrated to recreate a certain innocence and wonder at the grown-up world and its curious ways . . . He doesn’t pretend that simply sitting next to black classmates suddenly changed his way of looking at the world; he acknowledges that the process occurred over many years and much searching.”—New York Times Book Review
"From the protests in Ferguson to the movie about Selma, race has been at the forefront of the national conversation recently. On the news and at our dinner tables, the country is discussing how far we still have to go. How I Shed My Skin by Jim Grimsley, is a white writer's story of that journey -- where we've come from and how we move foward." —The Washington Post
“A powerful meditation on race.” —Natasha Trethewey, US Poet Laureate
“The lacunae underscore the divides between blacks and whites in the civil rights–era South, a gap Grimsley has spent most of his life trying to bridge. How I Shed My Skin recalls those efforts and serves to remind us that, decades later, there is still much more work to do.” —Emory Magazine
“[Grimsley’s] memories of junior high and high school remain especially vivid and poignant, and he recalls them in sometimes agonizing detail in How I Shed My Skin . . . Like Randall Kenan, he catches the weird ethos of a generation caught with one foot in Gone with the Wind or To Kill a Mockingbird and another in the world of “Star Trek” and Motown . . . How I Shed My Skin reminds us how far we’ve come in 40 years, and how far we didn’t go.” —Wilmington Star News
“Grimsley has a powerful tale to tell, about change, and the fears and triumphs that go with it . . . Despite the continued crossfire, he and his classmates -- 'cool and slouched, shy and lost' -- desegregated the schools of Jones County and became instruments of its history.” —Bookreporter.com
“[A] beautifully introspective memoir . . . In a world that continues to struggle with race relations, How I Shed My Skin is a stunning beacon of hope.” —Shelf Awareness for Readers
“Powerful . . . Grimsley’s brave self-examination of his own childhood prejudices makes this book personal; his struggle to reconcile and overcome those prejudices makes it universal and well worth reading.” —Birmingham Magazine
“Beautiful and brilliant . . . How I Shed My Skin does more to explore the racially inspired shootings and hate crimes of our present time than anything I have read.” —Washington Missourian
“Jim Grimsley isn’t one to shy away from the pained and difficult memories of his childhood . . . haunting.” —KirkusReviews.com
“Looking back some 40 years later, acclaimed writer Grimsley offers a beautifully written coming-of-age recollection from the era of racial desegregation.” —Booklist, starred review
“In this sensitive memoir, Grimsley probes the past to discover what and how he learned about race, equality and democracy ‘from the good white people’ in his family and community.” —Kirkus Reviews
