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Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist's Memoir of the Jim Crow South

Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist's Memoir of the Jim Crow South

by Winfred Rembert

Bloomsbury Publishing ·2021 ·304 pages ·Memoir
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80/99
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81/99

Critics

Top of the Pile

78/99

Readers

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Scholars

96/99

Rating

66/99

Volume

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About This Book

Winfred Rembert grew up as a field hand on a Georgia plantation. He embraced the Civil Rights Movement, endured political violence, survived a lynching, and spent seven years in prison on a chain gang. Years later, seeking a fresh start at the age of 52, he discovered his gift and vision as an artist, and using leather tooling skills he learned in prison, started etching and painting scenes from his youth. Rembert's work has been exhibited at museums and galleries across the country, profiled in the New York Times and more, and honored by Bryan Stevenson's Equal Justice Initiative. In Chasing Me to My Grave, he relates his life in prose and paintings—vivid, confrontational, revelatory, complex scenes from the cotton fields and chain gangs of the segregated south to the churches and night clubs of the urban north. This is also the story of finding epic love, and with it the courage to revisit a past that begs to remain buried, as told to Tufts philosopher Erin I. Kelly.


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Reviews

"Despite his incredible hardships, Rembert highlights the beauty he encountered, such as the kindness of strangers and his wife, Patsy, who encouraged him to 'turn my stories into art.' This is a stunning portrait of hope in the face of evil, barbarity, and racism."

Publishers Weekly Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"An ultimately uplifting journey from the ugliness of virulent racism to the beauty of art."

Kirkus Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"He was never going to outrun his blackness in Jim Crow or even in post-Civil Rights America, in the South or the North."

JEANNINE BURGDORF· The Chicago Review of Books Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"Rembert's memoir is cause for hope and shame."

ALBERT MOBILIO· Bookforum Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"With a foreword by Bryan Stevenson and superb color reproductions, Rembert's self-portrait in word and image belongs in every library."

Donna Seaman· Booklist Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"a testament to the ways one man used his art to educate, delight and depict the trauma that arises out of memory."

Henry L. Carrigan Jr.· BookPage Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

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