Amazon.com
"I never thought I'd see the day that the world would want to hear what two old Negro women have to say," says Bessie Delany. But Bessie and her sister, Sadie, born in 1893 and 1891, saw plenty, by eating a low-fat, high-vegetable diet and outliving the "old Rebby [rebel] boys" who once almost lynched Sadie. This remarkable memoir was a long-running bestseller, spawning a Broadway play and adding to their list of seasoned acquaintances (Marian Anderson, Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson, Cab Calloway) such spring chickens as Hillary Clinton. Born to a former slave whose owners broke the law by teaching him to read, the sisters got a solid education. North Carolina was paradise--despite the Rebbies--until Jim Crow reared its hideous head. The girls had loved to ride in the front of the trolley because the wind in their hair made them feel free, but one day the conductor sadly ordered them to the back. The family moved to New York, where Bessie became the town's second black woman dentist and Sadie the first black woman home-ec teacher. They befriended everyone who was anyone in the Harlem Renaissance (their brother won the 1925 Congressional primary there), pursued careers instead of husbands, and lived peacefully together, despite their differences. Sadie was more peaceable, like Booker T. Washington, while Bessie was a W.E.B. Du Bois-style militant.
They're funny: Bessie notes that blacks must be sharp to get ahead, "But if you're average and white, honey, you can go far. Just look at Dan Quayle. If that boy was colored he'd be washing dishes somewhere." And they are wise: Sadie says, "Life is short, and it's up to you to make it sweet."
From Publishers Weekly
In this remarkable and charming oral history, two lively and perspicacious sisters, aged 101 and 103, reflect on their rich family life and their careers as pioneering African American professionals. Brief chapters capture Sadie's warm voice ("Now, I was a 'mama's child' ") and Bessie's fiestiness ("I'm alive out of sheer determination, honey!"). The unmarried sisters, who live together, tell of growing up on the campus of a black college in Raleigh, N.C., where their father was an Episcopal priest, and of being too independent for the men who courted them. With parental influence far stronger than that of Jim Crow, they joined professions--Sadie teaching domestic science, Bessie practicing dentistry. In 1920s Harlem they mixed with black activists and later were among the first to integrate the New York City suburb of Mount Vernon. While their account of the last 40 years is sketchy, their observations about everything from black identity to their yoga exercises make them worthwhile company. Freelancer Hearth, who wrote an initial story on the sisters in the New York Times in 1991, has deftly shaped and contextualized their reflections. Photos. 35,000 first printing; first serial to American Heritage; BOMC alternate. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
The Delany sisters' story is a collective meditation on American life since Sadie's birth in 1889 and Bessie's in 1891 in Raleigh, North Carolina. As daughters of a black Episcopal bishop, they experienced the multifarious damage and distance of class and race in the segregated South. The sisters migrated to New York City's Harlem in the 1910s and in the 1950s to the suburb of Mt. Vernon, New York. The assertive Bessie battled racism and sexism as the only black female member of her Columbia University Dental School class in the 1920s. The more reticent Sadie became the first black domestic science teacher in the New York City high schools. Through the prism of poignant, personal episodes, these honest, thoughtful reminiscences illuminate two individual lives and a multitude of encounters along gender and color lines. Recommended for general collections on African Americans, women, and 20th-century America.- Brenda Brock, SUNY-BuffaloCopyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From AudioFile
The Delany sisters are part of America, and their book is an enduring portrait of our country's story. Through their words runs a history of African-Americans, women, Southerners and the Harlem Renaissance. Iona Morris magnificently delivers an array of participants in this account. Most important, her talent enables the listener to distinguish between the two sisters. She includes convincing Northern and Southern dialects. Though there are explanatory notes throughout the oral history, Morris never lets it impede the flow of the text. The highlight of the work is a closing interview with Bessie and Sadie. This presentation is a kind of spiritual experience and should not be overlooked by libraries or individual listeners. S.G.B. An AUDIOFILE Earphones Award winner (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine
From Kirkus Reviews
In a memoir that's as much a historical record as a testimony to two extraordinary women, the Delany sisters recall their remarkable lives, spanning more than a century of the African- American experience. Daughters of the nation's first black Episcopal bishop, Sadie and Bessie Delany, born in 1889 and 1891 respectively, are a living record of the seismic changes that have affected black America since Emancipation. Their father was born in slavery; their mother was the daughter of an ``issue-free negro'' and a white Virginian farmer who, though prohibited by law from marrying his beloved Martha Logan, treated her and his children as his lawful family. Raised in the sheltered environment of St. Augustine's School near Raleigh, where their father was the principal, the two girls were expected, like their eight other siblings, to excel both academically and morally. An idyllic childhood was followed by the introduction of Jim Crow legislation that soon made life in the South intolerable, prompting the sisters to move to Harlem. In New York, Sadie graduated from Pratt and became a high-school teacher, while Bessie, graduating from Columbia, became a dentist. The two were soon prominent in Harlem, befriending the black elite (Booker T. Washington, Cab Calloway, Adam Clayton Powell) and actively fighting racial discrimination. Today, looking back, they continue to reflect the wisdom, humor, and feistiness that enabled them to triumph over racism and sexism--the latter, in their opinion, not as corrosive as the former. The Delanys aren't optimistic about the future of race relations, believing that the momentum of the civil- rights struggle was taken away by the Vietnam War. An uplifting and delightful introduction to two splendid women of remarkable good sense and grace--and a fascinating chapter of history as well. (Thirty b&w photographs--not seen) (First printing of 35,000; first serial to American Heritage) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
"I felt proud to be an American citizen reading Having Our Say...the two voices, beautifully blended...evoke an epic history...often cruel and brutal, but always deeply humane."
-- The New York Times Book Review
"The Lord won't hold it against me that I'm colored because he made me that way! He thinks I am beautiful! And so do I even with all my wrinkles!"
-- Bessie Delany, at age 102
"This Jim Crow mess was pure foolishness. It's not law anymore, but it's still in some people's hearts. I just laugh it off, child. I never let prejudice stop me from what I wanted to do in this life."
-- Sadie Delany, at age 104
"This book is destined to become a classic! The Delany sisters--leave to us the best of legacies-two sets of dancing footprints for us to follow all our days ahead."
-- Clarissa Pinkola Estés, author of Women Who Run With the Wolves
"An unforgettable testimony to the dignity and courage of African-American women."
-- Shirlee Taylor Haizlip
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Review
"I felt proud to be an American citizen reading Having Our Say...the two voices, beautifully blended...evoke an epic history...often cruel and brutal, but always deeply humane."
-- The New York Times Book Review
"The Lord won't hold it against me that I'm colored because he made me that way! He thinks I am beautiful! And so do I even with all my wrinkles!"
-- Bessie Delany, at age 102
"This Jim Crow mess was pure foolishness. It's not law anymore, but it's still in some people's hearts. I just laugh it off, child. I never let prejudice stop me from what I wanted to do in this life."
-- Sadie Delany, at age 104
"This book is destined to become a classic! The Delany sisters--leave to us the best of legacies-two sets of dancing footprints for us to follow all our days ahead."
-- Clarissa Pinkola Estés, author of Women Who Run With the Wolves
"An unforgettable testimony to the dignity and courage of African-American women."
-- Shirlee Taylor Haizlip
From the Trade Paperback edition.
From the Publisher
In their 200+ combined years, Sadie and Bessie Delany have seen it all. They saw their father, who was born into slavery, become America's first black Episcopal bishop. They saw their mother--a woman of mixed racial parentage who was born free--give birth to ten children, all of whom would become college-educated, successful professionals in a time when blacks could scarcely expect to receive a high school diploma. They saw the post-Reconstruction South, the Jim Crow laws, Harlem's Golden Age, and the Civil Rights movement--and, in their own feisty, wise, inimitable way, they've got a lot to say about it.More than a firsthand account of black American history, Having Our Say teaches us about surviving, thriving, and embracing life, no matter what obstacles are in our way.
From the Inside Flap
Warm, feisty, and intelligent, the Delany sisters speak their mind in a book that is at once a vital historical record and a moving portrait of two remarkable women who continued to love, laugh, and embrace life after over a hundred years of living side by side.
Their sharp memories show us the post-Reconstruction South and Booker T. Washington; Harlem's Golden Age and Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Paul Robeson. Bessie breaks barriers to become a dentist; Sadie quietly integrates the New York City system as a high school teacher. Their extraordinary story makes an important contribution to our nation's heritage--and an indelible impression on our lives.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
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