Baby Got Books

It was supposed to be funny

Reading the comments on the cover of I’m Down (“hilarious” “laugh-out-loud”) including the picture of a young white girl with a big afro by Mishna Wolff, it would appear this book could be a natural extension of my Chelsea Handler summer reading material since I love to laugh. Not so. In fact, I found this memoir to be a bit unsettling.

I’m Down is about Ms. Wolff, a white girl growing up in the proverbial black ‘hood of Seattle. She does not fit into the neighborhood as completely as her father would like. He wants her to be “down” – to act like all the other kids on their block. To please him, she tries her best. At one point she does enjoy some success with ‘capping (public insults similar to “yo moma” jokes). She feels almost accepted by the kids in the neighborhood – but is suddenly moved to a more academic school where the population consists of smart, rich, white kids. She finds she is not a natural fit there either. Ms.Wolff can not believe that these white, presumably privileged kids are not happy either. She is introduced to a world of depression and cutting by girls who are also crying for acceptance and love from their parents.

At first glance, I was a bit insulted regarding the race issue. Normally I’m not the most politically correct person but reading that her dad wants her to be more “black” made my blood boil. Ms. Wolff claims that her father thinks he’s black because he has permed his hair into an afro, doesn’t have a job, begins but never finishes construction projects on the house and plays a lot of poker with the other unemployed men who live nearby. Is this being black? Or is this being economically disadvantaged (a.k.a. “poor”) in an urban neighborhood? It’s curious to me because my husband is black (I am not) and no one in his family acts like the people in this book. If you don’t go deeper into the book, then it’s just more of the same stereotypical trash that never seems to end.

At second glance however, race isn’t the real issue. The issue is acceptance and love. I was reminded of my childhood and the difficulties I encountered trying to ‘fit in’ being the fat kid from divorced parents that no one wanted to hang around. Whether racial, socio-economical, educational or even appearance, most children experience similar challenges. Unfortunately for Ms. Wolff, she didn’t have parents to whom she could trun to sort all of this out. My heart broke for Ms. Wolff and her endless effort to please her father. Ms. Wolff overhears her father’s girlfriends commenting on her new classmates:

They are not gifted unless gifted is another word for bad……….That girl is no more gifted than any of my kids and she’s disrespectful, thinking she knows more than grown folks.” Her dad then replies “ But even before she went there [to the school] Mishna thought she was better than everyone. She’s just snotty like her mother.

Ms. Wolff (and I) cringed at her father’s response. She aches for her father’s acceptance and love but she never measures up to “his” world. Even during her parents’ divorce, she was hoping the judge would ask her who she liked better so she could say:

Mom. Not because I liked her better, but because I knew I was cool enough for Mom. And I felt that not being quite good enough for Dad might cause problems down the road – like I’d cramp his style and maybe he’d decide to leave me at a party.

Although she felt cool enough for her mom, her mom is emotionally absent. She left the family to take care of her own personal issues. Later Ms. Wolff does move in with her, but it’s because she feels she causes too many problems in her dad’s new family with his new wife, not because her mother gives her any emotional support or positive guidance.

The story ends with hope that everything will eventually work out. When I Googled Ms. Wolff, I found that she had dropped out of high school at 16. I can only hope that by writing the memoir and speaking about her life she can understand the reasons for her father’s behavior and break that emotional abusive cycle with her future children.

All in all, a decent collection of childhood experiences – just don’t expect to laugh.