The Grace of Silence: A Memoir

In the wake of talk of a "postracial" America upon Barack Obama's ascension as president of the United States, Michele Norris, cohost of National Public Radio's flagship program All Things Considered, set out to write, through original reporting, a book about "the hidden conversation" on race that is unfolding nationwide. She would, she thought, base her book on the frank disclosures of others on the subject, but she was soon disabused of her presumption when forced to confront the fact that "the conversation" in her own family had not been forthright.

Norris unearthed painful family secrets that compelled her to question her own self-understanding: from her father's shooting by a Birmingham police officer weeks after his discharge from the navy at the conclusion of World War II to her maternal grandmother's peddling pancake mix as an itinerant Aunt Jemima to white farm women in the Midwest. In what became a profoundly personal and bracing journey into her family's past, Norris traveled from her childhood home in Minneapolis to her ancestral roots in the Deep South to explore the reasons for the "things left unsaid" by her father and mother when she was growing up, the better to come to terms with her own identity. Along the way she discovered how her character was forged by both revelation and silence.

Extraordinary for Norris's candor in examining her own racial legacy and what it means to be an American, The Grace of Silence is also informed by rigorous research in its evocation of time and place, scores of interviews with ordinary folk, and wise observations about evolving attitudes, at once encouraging and disturbing, toward race in America today. For its particularity and universality, it is powerfully moving, a tour de force.

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The Grace of Silence: A Memoir

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Product Details

BN ID:	2940169149449
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	09/21/2010
Edition description:	Unabridged

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Daddy

My father was one of those people who are most comfortable at the fringes, away from the action center stage. He did not need or crave attention. Instead, he was driven by the need to reassure others that everything was going to be all right. Belvin Norris Jr. was a ﬁxer. An eternal optimist to the core. You could see it in his smile. As a grown man he still grinned like a schoolboy, and you could not help but grin along with him. His vibe was contagious. Kindness is usually seen as altruistic. But it can also be an act of desperation, satisfying a deep-seated need to avoid the mind's darker places. Benevolence, for some, is a survival tactic.

Even in his last hours my father practiced benevolence, always looking out for everybody else. Moments after the doctor delivered devastating news about his health, my father, still smiling, pointed to an infected cut on my left hand. It was his way of prodding the emergency room physician to turn his attention to me. The victim opting to be the benefactor.

Dad took ill in June 1988, while visiting his brother Simpson in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The minute he called me I knew something awful had happened. His voice was graveled, his words rubbery. He couldn't put a sentence together, and the failed effort only added to his frustration. He had lost control of his speech, but he managed to hold on to his sunny disposition. Although his words were incomprehensible, I sensed a false cheer, with each attempt at speech ending on an elevated note--the kind of verbal leap parents of very young children use to mask irritation or fear.

I was working as a newspaper reporter in Chicago at the time. Dad had stopped by to visit me on his way to Uncle Simpson's house. We had spent a few days going to baseball games and trying to get my kitchen in order. He was relieved to see that I'd ﬁnally learned to enjoy spending time at the stove. I showed off for him with jambalaya and pineapple upside-down cake. It worked. He set small talk aside, went back for seconds, and still had room for a huge piece of cake. When he was ﬁnished he dabbed his mouth and said, "Maybe now you'll ﬁnd someone who will put up with you."

To another person, this might have sounded like a dig, but I knew what he meant. I could use my kitchen skills to cook at home and save money and to help "close the deal" when I found the right man. I was twenty-six and living on my own in Chicago. No husband. No roommate. Just me in a second-story duplex apartment with high ceilings, a large kitchen, and actual furniture. For years my father had visited me at various apartments where the most comfortable chair had been either a wooden crate or something recovered from the curb on trash day. He never let me forget an embarrassing episode when I was living in southern California. A neighbor stopped by my Manhattan Beach apartment to borrow a coffee ﬁlter one Saturday morning. She couldn't stop staring at the wingback armchair in which my father sat reading the Los Angeles Times. "You know, Michele," she said, "that looks like the chair I threw out for bulk trash pickup a few weeks ago."

My neighbor left with her borrowed coffee ﬁlter and a piece of my dignity. Lucky for me, my father had a sense of humor and a strong commitment to thrift. He always believed that the prettiest car on the road was the one that was paid in full, and in his book the most attractive chair in my cramped living room that day was the one that had arrived without a price tag. We had a good laugh, and when he left, he snuck an envelope into my jewelry box with "sofa fund" written on...

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