Child, Please (BOOK REVIEW)
Child,
Please
How
Mama’s Old-School Lessons Helped Me Check Myself before I Wrecked
Myself
by
Ylonda Gault Caviness
Tarcher
/ Penguin Random House
Hardcover,
$25.95
320
pages
ISBN:
978-0-399-16996-0
Book
Review by Kam Williams
“In this wise and funny
memoir, Ylonda Gault Caviness describes her journey to the
realization that all the parenting advice she was obsessively
devouring, as a new parent, and sharing with the world as a parenting
expert... didn't mean scratch compared with her mama's old-school
wisdom as a strong black woman...
With child #1, Caviness
set her course: to give her children everything she had. Child #2
came along, and she patiently persisted. But when her 3rd
child arrived, [she] was so exhausted that she decided to listen to
what her mother had been saying all along: Give them everything they
want, and there'll be nothing left of you.
In Child, Please Caviness
describes the road back to embracing a more sane—not to mention
loving—way of raising children. Her mother had it right all along.”
-- Excerpted from the
book jacket
Toya
Graham was at home watching TV coverage of the recent Baltimore riots
when she spotted her only son, Michael, in an unruly crowd of kids
taunting and throwing objects at the police. Without giving it a
second thought, the shocked, single-mother of six sprang into action
and rushed right down to the scene to retrieve her misbehaving 16
year-old.
Cell
phone cameras caught Toya lecturing and slapping Michael silly as she
dragged him away. The video soon went viral and the debate began
about whether or not the corporal punishment was appropriate. She was
dubbed “Mother of the Year” by some, and abusive by others.
The
incident reminded me of a bygone era when not only your own momma but
any adult in the neighborhood might straighten you out if you were
messin' up. However, that strict style of upbringing has long since
fallen by the wayside in favor of a politically-correct age of
permissiveness.
Nevertheless,
perhaps the pendulum might ready to swing back in the other
direction, as evidenced by Toya Graham's teachable moment about
accountability and by the publication of Child, Please: How Mama’s
Old-School Lessons Helped Me Check Myself before I Wrecked Myself .
Ironically, this delightful memoir was written by Ylonda Gault
Caviness, a sister who, for years, had appeared as an expert on
everything from The Today Show to National Public Radio, where she
would extol the virtues of the relatively-lax, modern parenting
styles, much to the chagrin of her more traditional mother.
Ylonda
has belatedly come to embrace more of her mom's supposedly-antiquated
approach after becoming exasperated by the challenge of rearing her
own three daughters. “Any fool could see, Mama had the whole
motherhood thing down to a science,” she concedes. “Now, in my
forties, I finally get it.”
An
entertaining autobiography and also an overdue salute to generations
of African-American females who've held families together while
successfully meeting the challenge of raising kids right.
To
see a video of “Mother of the Year” Toya Graham's smackdown of
her son, visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASwycxar7Vw
To
order a copy of Child, Please, visit:
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