cover image Growing Up Nigger Rich

Growing Up Nigger Rich

Gwendoline Y. Fortune, Gwen Y. Fortune. Pelican Publishing Company, $22 (256pp) ISBN 978-1-56554-963-0

Gwendoline Y. Fortune's Growing up Nigger Rich is appealing, but considerably less provocative than its title suggests. Black professor Gayla Turner returns during a sabbatical to the small Southern town where she grew up, haunted by memories of racism. The subplot of her friend Louise's current involvement with a white man echoes a doomed interracial love affair in the town decades ago. Meanwhile, Gayla worries over her own tenuous relationship with her father, an aging doctor, and remains all but oblivious to her husband's philandering back home. While Fortune's understatement is effective at times, one hopes she will raise her voice next time out. 12-city author tour.