What We're Reading: Laurie

I'm Down by Mishna Wolff.

Mishna Wolff grew up in a very poor all black neighborhood in Seattle with her outgoing younger sister Anora, and her father John, a self-proclaimed black man. Wolff's parents were hippies who lived in Vermont. After their divorce, her mother became a Buddhist and her father moved back to the neighborhood where he grew up with Mishna and Anora in tow. Wolff's father only dated black women, had all black friends and encouraged his daughters to be "down" with the people in the neighborhood. Mishna was very shy, socially awkward, found it very difficult to fit in and very hard to please her father because she was too "white". Once she finally began to make friends, her mother decided to enroll her in an all white school full of rich kids where she found she was too "black" to fit in.
This funny, and at times frustrating and sad, memoir tells an interesting story about a girl trying to find her own identity and her own place in the world-something we can all relate to.