I'm Down by Mishna Wolff

I'm Down: A Memoir, Mishna Wolff.  New York: St. Martin's Press, 2009.  e-book, 208 pps.

     Mishna and her younger sister are white.  Their divorced parents are white.  But their dad thinks he is black.  He is so enamored of Black Culture that he lives in a black neighborhood and raises his children as if they were also black.  The two sisters attend a summer recreational program with not much recreation in it.  Mishna learns how to cap.  She despairs of her dad's increasingly bizarre girlfriends and eventually is forced to retreat to her mother's home in an affluent [predominantly] white neighborhood.  She discovers that a few of her white rich girl classmates are pretty mixed up in spite of their very different upbringing.

sapphoq reviews says:  Mishna Wolff has written a fine memoir of her unique upbringing.  Her memories are treated with both seriousness and humor.  I could picture her as a younger in my mind.  Highly recommended as an anecdotal exploration of what it means to be the Other in the United States of America.