As much as I respect Anne Moody and all that she accomplished and experienced in her life, this autobiography didn't really touch my heart or my soul in any way. Perhaps Moody is stoic by nature, I don't know. To be fair, I also blame the writing. Moody writes in a very systematic, detached, expressionless style that made it difficult for me to feel what she's feeling or to do more than sympathize for a few moments before I was forced to move on to the next notable event in her life. This book reads almost like a text book. It was missing the personal touches of emotion that I expected from a book like this.

I also found it strange that, despite having 6-8 siblings, Moody hardly mentions any of them throughout her childhood, high school, or college years. We barely get a glimpse of Adline and Junior (Moody's real siblings) and that too, only when Anne is 23 and grown. I don't know, I just wasn't as impressed with this autobiography as I expected to be.

Last semester we read The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara for our history class and I liked it... more than I thought I would. It was emotional and sentimental and heartbreaking... I guess I just wanted to be moved by this story. I kept waiting for the emotions to hit me, but they never did.

I finished this book a few days ago and have really thought a lot about what to say. I have such mixed feelings. It was good enough to hold my interest, but about 3/4 of the way through I grew weary of what I perceived as near constant whining.

Anne deserves so much credit for her bravery during the civil rights movement. A part of the infamous Woolworth sit in at the lunch counter wherein she and her fellow protesters sat at what was then an all white lunch counter. Refusing to leave, they suffered verbal and physical abuse. Anne was arrested throughout her career in civil rights protests and she deserves much credit for thousands of hours of trying to canvas black neighborhoods in the hope of increasing voter registration.

Dirt poor as a child, her parents separated and times were very tough. At an early age, she helped support her family by doing various domestic work. She was indeed a very spunky, tough self reliant person.

My fault with the book is the repetitive negativity. It seems that Anne has quite a huge chip on her shoulder, not just regarding white people, but blacks as well. And, many times she comes across as a know it all. Even her assessment of Dr. Martin Luther King's I Had a Dream Speech seemed derogatory.

While I can admire her accomplishments and her fortitude, I also think she had some severe issues of inability to look at herself in relation to her negative comments and actions of others.

I started out very interested in her story and her depiction in all terrible atrocities of southern whites and their treatment of blacks. I can only imagine what it was like to live in this terrible period of history.

However, as I finished the book, I truly wish I could have liked her more.

4.5
I cannot express how important this book is to read to understand history. This was a fantastic read and I wish I had more time to leisurely read it and soak up more details. Moody kept me on my toes and is a fantastic storyteller. It’s a shame she never wrote another novel.

“If you want to know the truth, read black women authors.” —Amanda Johnson

When I was an undergrad, all my professors assumed someone else had already assigned this book to me, and as a result, I never read. I'm glad I finally did, though, as its a really telling firsthand account of what it meant to grow up poor and Black girl in rural Mississippi as the Civil Rights Movement gained steam.

This was a very compelling memoir. I kept getting lost in it because of Moody's direct and descriptive writing style. Moody was an important member of the Civil Rights movement in the Deep South. Many of the things she was writing about in 1968 are still happening in the States.

You'll be emotional from page one to page done. Here is a snippet of my review on Grab the Lapels:

Moody’s book also taught me details of the Civil Rights Movement of which I was not aware, even though I’ve studied and taught the time period. For instance, when a house full of activists hear through the grapevine that a group of whites are going to kill them that night and block all the roads out of town, the young men and women lay out in the yard all night in long grass. It’s wet, hard, and they’re all shaking in terror. I felt like I was there with them. Moody’s family also turns on her quickly so they won’t be killed. Her favorite grandma treats her like a stranger. Later, I learned that in one town where Moody leads a group of activists that black people have most of the land and make up most of the population. However, land and crop contracts are only given to white farmers, so the black farmers sit on cropless land and nearly starve to death. Furthermore, I knew that activists were constantly arrested, but Moody explains that they were packed into a truck and locked in, after which the driver would crank up the heat on a 100+ degree day and leave them in their for hours until people freaked out or nearly died. When a headless black body is found, the colleges do room checks to see if it’s one of their students. The Klan shared pamphlets door-to-door with a blacklist of certain people (Moody’s picture appears on their list). This is the stuff you don’t get in your history textbook.

⭐️4.5⭐️

You know, just when you think you have read all of the books that seem to fall into the category of racism in the South, you come across something like this, that blows the idea that you can't read anymore out of the water. This is so well written, I could not put it down. Very different than many similar books, this is a must read, especially for life writing scholars and lovers alike.

The life of a Black girl in Mississippi during the 60’s. It was enlightening as I was just a child while this was occurring. I have a vague memory of these happenings, and this helped clarify many things. Had I been born Black, my life would have been so very different than it is now.

This was read by my Mississippi Book Club. My brilliant friend, Terry, suggested that we compare the lives of Anne Moody and Mary Ann Connell (An Unforeseen Life, which we read earlier). Both were born in the same area of Mississippi around the same time. Both were bright, attractive, and personable. One was Black, one was not. Eye opening observation.

One of the first books I read in eaqrly adolescents that gave me a clearn sense waht it must have been like to live during the Civil Right Era.

Autobiography of Anne Moody, a civil rights activist in the early 60's. The book tells the story of her life from a poor child growing up in Mississippi through high school and college and finally to her work with the movement in her early 20's.

I found the book very interesting. And almost unbelievable to think these sorts of things were going on such a short time ago.

However, I wasn't at all impressed with the writing or the editing of the book. I felt the story was scattered, at times leaving out important events, and other times giving time by time details to mundane events. I wish there would have been more consistency - it would have reading the book so much better.

In the novel , "Coming Of Age In Mississippi " written by Anne Moody , tells the first person account of a young african american girl growing up and learning that she was considered to be inferior to an individual with white skin. The author does a really good job of telling us of the time when she truly understood segregation. This novel is a inspiring story about a young lady that grew up and realized that she wasnt going to just be complacent and accept the way that her people were treated. Instead, at a young age, she decided that she would join as many organizations as possible to make a conscious effort to do her part in bettering the conditions for blacks at her time.

Although i did enjoy reading this book, i would only rate it four stars. I didnt like that the author spent so much of the beginning of the novel on her childhood. I do realize that the background is important but i would have liked to read more information on her high school years. In my opinion, that was the most inspiring part of the story. That is the part that makes the book as interesting as it is.

A very well- known incident that ocurred and changed Anne , the main character's, outlook on life was the lynching of Emmet Till. He was young man accused of whistling a a white woman and he was immediately arrested and lynched. In her words , this is the impact that that incident had on her life:"known the fear of hunger, hell, and the Devil. But now there was…the fear of being killed just because I was black." This is the exact moment when she decided that was going to fight for freedom.


I would recommend this book to anyone that is interested in learning about the mistreatment of blacks during before the civil rights movement. Moody does an outstanding job in portraying a vivid picture in the minds of her readers of what it would be like to grow up during this era. From her relationship with her family, to her struggling to go to school and then rush to work each day or even just the racism. I admire the author because she was courageous enough to get involved with a movement despite the advisement of her family members. What i learned from this book was that sometimes you ahve to make decisions and your family wont always agree. Especially in this era, most African Americans are afraid of challenging the system even though they dont agree with it but the author decided that she couldnt just sit around and allow the mistreatment. If there werent individuals like her , or Martin Luther King , Jr ; then the afro-american community would still be facing injustices everyday.