Syndetics cover image
Image from Syndetics

Chasing me to my grave : an artist's memoir of the Jim Crow South / Winfred Rembert, as told to Erin I. Kelly ; foreword by Bryan Stevenson.

By: Contributor(s): Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York : Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021Description: xvi, 284 pages : color illustrations ; 27 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9781635576597
  • 1635576598
Subject(s): Genre/Form:
Contents:
Foreword by Bryan Stevenson -- Preface -- Walking to my mother -- From cain't to cain't -- Hamilton Avenue -- The everyday lie -- Doll's head baseball -- In deep -- A man don't know what he can go through -- Reidsville State Prison -- Finding Patsy -- The chain gang -- Out of the ditch -- Becoming a leather man -- Bridgeport docks and projects -- A good, bad man -- Patsy's story -- I had to scuffle -- Life on leather -- A thinking man's thing -- Homecoming -- Searching for the riverbanks.
Summary: "A self-taught artist's odyssey from Jim Crow era Georgia to the Yale Art Gallery--a stunningly vivid, full-color memoir in prose and painted leather, with a foreword by Equal Justice Initiative founder Bryan Stevenson. 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"-- Provided by publisher.
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library Biography REMBERT, W. R385 Available 33111010557466
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

WINNER OF THE 2022 PULITZER PRIZE IN BIOGRAPHY

Booklist #1 Nonfiction Book of the Year * African American Literary Book Club (AALBC) #1 Nonfiction Bestseller * Named a Best Book of the Year by: NPR, Publishers Weekly , BookPage , Barnes & Noble, Hudson Booksellers, ARTnews , and more * Amazon Editors' Pick * Carnegie Medal of Excellence in Nonfiction Longlist

"A compelling and important history that this nation desperately needs to hear." --Bryan Stevenson, New York Times bestselling author of Just Mercy and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative

Winfred Rembert grew up in a family of Georgia field laborers and joined the Civil Rights Movement as a teenager. He was arrested after fleeing a demonstration, survived a near-lynching at the hands of law enforcement, and spent seven years on chain gangs. During that time he met the undaunted Patsy, who would become his wife. Years later, at the age of fifty-one and with Patsy's encouragement, he started drawing and painting scenes from his youth using leather tooling skills he learned in prison.

Chasing Me to My Grave presents Rembert's breathtaking body of work alongside his story, as told to Tufts Philosopher Erin I. Kelly. Rembert calls forth vibrant scenes of Black life on Cuthbert, Georgia's Hamilton Avenue, where he first glimpsed the possibility of a life outside the cotton field. As he pays tribute, exuberant and heartfelt, to Cuthbert's Black community and the people, including Patsy, who helped him to find the courage to revisit a traumatic past, Rembert brings to life the promise and the danger of Civil Rights protest, the brutalities of incarceration, his search for his mother's love, and the epic bond he found with Patsy.

Vivid, confrontational, revelatory, and complex, Chasing Me to My Grave is a searing memoir in prose and painted leather that celebrates Black life and summons readers to confront painful and urgent realities at the heart of American history and society.

"A self-taught artist's odyssey from Jim Crow era Georgia to the Yale Art Gallery--a stunningly vivid, full-color memoir in prose and painted leather, with a foreword by Equal Justice Initiative founder Bryan Stevenson. 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"-- Provided by publisher.

Foreword by Bryan Stevenson -- Preface -- Walking to my mother -- From cain't to cain't -- Hamilton Avenue -- The everyday lie -- Doll's head baseball -- In deep -- A man don't know what he can go through -- Reidsville State Prison -- Finding Patsy -- The chain gang -- Out of the ditch -- Becoming a leather man -- Bridgeport docks and projects -- A good, bad man -- Patsy's story -- I had to scuffle -- Life on leather -- A thinking man's thing -- Homecoming -- Searching for the riverbanks.

Powered by Koha