James McBride is new to me, and I will definitely be reading more of his work. He tells this story of his mother's life and his own in an honest and loving way that is very enjoyable and easy to relate to. I especially liked his discussion of the different things it meant to him over the years, being mixed race, and how he has worked at coming to terms with that. His mother is a force of nature. The accomplishments of her children would be legendary in any family, but given the societal taboos against mixed race marriages, and the challenges she faced with the loss of two husbands, it's even more impressive. 
 Being mixed is like that tingling feeling you have in your nose just before you sneeze - you're waiting for it to happen but it never does. Given my black face and upbringing it was easy for me to flee into the anonymity of blackness, yet I felt frustrated to live in a world that considers the color of your face an immediate political statement whether you like it or not. It took years before I began to accept the fact that the nebulous "white man's world" wasn't as free as it looked; that class, luck, religion all factored in as well; that many white individuals' problems surpassed my own, often by a lot; that all Jews are not like my grandfather and that part of me is Jewish too. Yet the color boundary in my mind was and still is the greatest hurdle. 
 Another quote I loved was the mother's description of her favorite preacher: 
 That man was the finest preacher I've ever heard to this day. He could make a frog stand up and get happy with Jesus.