I’m Down (Memoir) Blog 1

I’m Down by Mishna Wolff is a comical memoir of white girl living in an all black neighbourhood. Humor is a major tool used by Wolff to keep the reader interested as well as interesting storyline.

“I AM WHITE. My parents, both white. My sister had the same mother and father as me-all of us completely white… However, my dad, John Wolff, or as the guys in the neighbourhood called him, ‘Wolfy’, truly believed he was a black man. He strutted around with a short perm, a Cosby-esqe sweater, gold chains, and a Kangol,-telling jokes like Redd Foxx, and giving advice like Jesse Jackson. He walked like a black man, and he played sports like a black man. You couldn’t tell my father he was white. Believe me, I tried. It wasn’t an identity crisis; it’s who he was. He was from ‘the neighbourhood’-our neighbourhood.

There is a certain amount of tension that’s created throughout the novel, just because of the Wolff’s situation of being the only whites in an all black neighbourhood. It makes for a good story because its usually the opposite, one token black family in an all white neighbourhood. Normally, it would be a heavy issue but Wolff manages to make it funny and humourous.

“That was before school busing programs, when middle-class white people started moving out of the cities and into the suburbs, because, ‘you know’. My grandparents were too cheap to be racist. You don’t sell when the market is down. And as the neighbourhood got blacker-so did my dad. He was in high school when he started to help the Black Panthers with the breakfast program. He played sports and he made his friends. They were the brothers and he was cool.”