Book Review: Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir Of Family
by Condoleezza Rice
Publication Date: Oct 12, 2010
List Price: $27.00
Format: Hardcover, 342 pages
Classification: Nonfiction
ISBN13: 9780307587879
Imprint: Knopf
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Parent Company: Bertelsmann
Read a Description of Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir Of Family
Book Reviewed by Kam Williams
"John and Angelena Rice were extraordinary, ordinary
people. They were middle-class folks who loved God, family, and their
country. I don’t think they ever read a book on parenting. They were just
good at it…
They built a world together that wove the fibers of our life into a seamless
tapestry of high expectations and unconditional love. And somehow they
raised their little girl in Jim Crow Birmingham to believe that even if she
couldn’t have a hamburger at the Woolworth’s lunch counter, she could be
President of the United States…
Good parents are a blessing. Mine were determined to give me a chance to
live a unique and happy life. In that they succeeded, and that is why every
night I begin my prayers saying, ‘Lord, I can never thank you enough for the
parents you gave me.’"
—Excerpted from the Author’s Note
Given all that Condoleezza Rice went on to accomplish in life, it’s hard
to believe that she was born in Birmingham, Alabama in the Fifties during
the repressive reign of Jim Crow segregation. But somehow, despite spending
her formative years in a city where state-sanctioned discrimination served
to frustrate the aspirations of most other African-Americans, she
miraculously managed to overachieve with the help of doting parents blessed
with the sense to recognize their gifted daughter’s great potential and to
nourish her dreams the best they could.
The former secretary of State pays tribute to that herculean effort in
"Extraordinary, Ordinary People," a remarkably-revealing memoir by a very
private, public figure who has to this juncture in life played her cards
pretty close to the vest. But you had a sense something might be up when she
recently played piano behind Aretha at a concert in Philadelphia. And after
reading this intimate autobiography it’s clear that underneath that
seemingly-steely veneer beats the heart is an introspective sister who’s
yearning to recognize her roots.
For in unusually-vulnerable, and disarmingly soul-baring style, she
discusses everything from what type of man she’s looking for ("I’d always
hoped to marry within my race.") to her fear of being rendered barren by a
surgical procedure for uterine fibroids to being an intellectually-curious
child prodigy. She also tackles head-on a variety of controversial questions
often debated within the black community, like social status based on skin
color, and whether the primary beneficiary of desegregation has been a black
bourgeoisie which had barely participated in the Civil Rights Movement.
However, it is her reflections on traumatizing childhood experiences in
Birmingham in the Sixties which prove to be the most compelling. For
ins tance, she recalls how her dad and other armed men routinely patrolled
the neighborhood to keep the Klu Klux Klan at bay.
Sadly, they were ultimately unsuccessful that fateful day in 1963 on which
four little girls attending Sunday school were killed by a bomb planted by
racists in an unspeakable act she refers to as "homegrown terrorism." Then
nine year-old Condoleezza was attending services at a nearby church at the
time. Here, she describes not only what it was like to feel the shock waves
from the blast, but also to witness the widespread grief and fear which
gripped so many folks during the aftermath.
In sum, an evocative opus fully humanizing a once-inscrutable Madam
Secretary. I just have one question: May I call you Condi at the homecoming
party?