My Grandfather's Son: A Memoir by Clarence Thomas Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of My Grandfather's Son: A Memoir
Book Review: Save your money and buy a comic book!
Summary: 1 Stars
The commentary by Vaughn A Carney; Helen Mcikeever; TheLyingThief; and A Wannabee "AW" are a must read to get the real feel of how bad this "dude" really is. C.Thomas is the most shallow of jurists to ever sit on the great court. To think that he replaced one of the Great modern jurists, let alone person of color. He's just a petty winning guy who thinks that life has given him a raw deal. Well wake up dude, life is tough and whether you're white, black or in between you make of life what you can. My father lived through four death camps each one worse than the one before. Where other men died he lived, not because he blamed fate or others. He did what he had to in order to survive. He lived through a hell that none of us could ever imagine. Survivors of the Holocaust know what I'm talking about. So stop winning about how bad you had it. If you sat across the table from my father and placed your life on the table of life would you want to take his life in exchange? Would you want to face death each and every day? Or would you take back your own sorry life regardless of how bad you had it? You're crying because you couldn't make it in law after graduating from Yale Law. Going to an Ivy League school is no guarantee of anything, look at George Bush! Give me a break! What surprised me is that my father was never bitter about what had happened to him. And you even as a justice of the highest court in the greatest nation on earth are bitter about what happened to you during your election to that court! Quite frankly you should never have been confirmed. If there are those who do want to read your sorry story, they should go to the library; or wait until it gets to the dollar bin in the used and second hand bookstores. You were a joke during the confirmation and now you've made yourself into a clown.Book Review: A Wonderful Memoir
Summary: 5 Stars
The hero of this book is not Clarence Thomas. It is his grandfather who raised him and his brother from childhood. His mother was an illegitimate child, just as he was himself. The grandfather later married and, when his daughter, Justice Thomas' mother, was struggling to raise three children in the slums of Charleston, he took the boys in and raised them to be fiercely independent men. The grandfather and his wife had a neat and clean, though small, house and later he built a second house on family farm land outside the cty. He kept the boys working on that farm in the summer, much to their anger, to keep them away from other boys who were at risk of serious trouble in the streets of Charleston. Justice Thomas' early life was one of hard work and hard study under the nuns in Catholic school. His grandfather scraped up the school fees to keep his boys out of the evil atmosphere that dragged so many young black men into trouble. For years, Justice Thomas and his grandfather had a tense relationship as neither could express his feelings well and the grandson only realized years later what a debt he owed to this harsh but loving man. The confirmation story, and the alleged "anger" are near the end of the book. The rest is an inspiring story of love and discipline and a life that should impress anyone who reads it with the open mind. The book now goes to my daughter and it should be required reading for the pampered children of the middle class who have had few obstacles in their way thus far in life.Book Review: Powerfully inspiring - a strong message for kids of all races
Summary: 5 Stars
Finished this book last night and I must say that it has been a long time since a book really had an impact on me. In fairness, I have been and continue to a fan of Clarence Thomas. This book served to deepen my respect and admiration for a man who has suffered more and accomplished more than 99.99% of us.
From his childhood having to sleep on a chair, to meeting his father, living with his stern grandfather - Clarence Thomas had a tough life by ANY American definition. To have stuck it out and accomplished great things in his life as he has is just a testament to his upbringing.
When you read his writings about people he has worked with, you get a real sense of gentleness in this man. A feeling that is borne out if you listen to his clerks.
His message to kids caught in the same web he was in - "You can do it!". There is simply no young person that could read this story and not be inspired by the difficulties Justice Thomas overcame.
If you can put aside political thoughts, this book is simply powerful and inspirational. Highly recommended.
Book Review: My Grandfather's Son: A Memoir
Summary: 1 Stars
From Frank Rich's NYT article: "Nobody Knows the Lynchings He's Seen":
"Republicans who play the race card may find that it has an expiration date even in the South. In 2000, Mr. Bush could speak at Bob Jones University when it still forbade interracial dating among its students, and John McCain could be tarred as the father of an illegitimate black child in the South Carolina primary. No more. Just ask the former Senator George Allen, the once invincible Republican prince of Virginia, whose career ended in 2006 after his use of a single racial slur.
"Mr. Thomas seems ignorant of this changing America. He can never see past his enemies' list, which in his book expands beyond his political foes, Yale and the press to "elite white women" and "paternalistic big-city whites" and "light-skinned blacks." (He does include a warm mention of Mr. Thurmond, a supporter in 1991, without mentioning that the senator hid away a child fathered with a black maid.) Always eager to cast himself as a lynching victim, Mr. Thomas is far more trapped in the past than the 1960s civil-rights orthodoxy he relentlessly demonizes."
I recall Justice Thomas' circus nomination and initially sympathized with his plight -- a black man accused of sexual harassment by a black woman. As a black man, I have intimate sympathy with that.
However, as a "light-skinned black," I must respond to this slight against something none of us have control over: paternity and genetics. To state it is evidence of a deep self-loathing the justice has for himself and his kind. "Willie Lynch" is active in his tortured psyche.
I am also my grandfather's son. His name was Moses Pickett Goodwin. He was a sharecropper. He died when my father was three years of age. My grandfather was a teacher. My father, who did not have a formal education past the 6th grade (he had to work for his mother's family) made sure that I did with stories about my grandfather and fostered a love of reading: Shakespeare, Milton, Aristotle, and Plato while we physically lived in "the 'hood." My mother gave me the courage to dream and reach beyond my circumstances.
Justice Thomas obviously has deep-seated insecurities about his role and legal abilities on the bench following Thurgood Marshall's dignified reign (When he stepped down, Marshall said a "black snake is just as dangerous as a white snake," though some thought it a slight to Thomas, others thought the "meaning that the race of someone shouldn't matter in his ability to serve as a justice." See: http://www3.baylor.edu/Corral/0305_williams.html, a derivation from the original argument in the piece.)
I haven't looked for miracles from the court since Thomas' appointment. As CNN legal correspondent Jeffrey Toobin reports in "The Nine," the 2000 election was not theirs or Thomas' finest hour. However, I have looked for an independence of legal opinion, courage to buck even his (own) party affiliations for the support of the Constitution.
What I see instead is a (still) insecure male that has to attack a woman that did not invite her first appearance before his confirmation: it had been a part of the record before that. Dr. Hill did not invite slander in his book and had basically retired to a quite, tenured life of academics. A man that uses his bully podium to assault a woman verbally but will not engage her face-to-face in accusations or apology has only one word I can use to describe him: coward. Thus, my money will not go to the purchase of this book. He has enough of a choir that he preaches to for (undeserved) financial gain.
Book Review: interesting and generally well done
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a very interesting book that finally gives some insight into how one of the most controversial members of the Supreme Court sees himself. Justice Thomas' life story is indeed a complex, and remarkable one. And so, it turns out, is his character. While some reviewers have accused Thomas of self-serving autobiographical revisionsim, I disagree. There's no doubt that Thomas interprets his early life according to his experience and current views . . . but who doesn't? I think Thomas portrays himself fairly . . . he gives fair exposure to his faults and mistakes (even if there is a little bit of gloss on them). I see this book as Thomas' reconciliation of where he is with where he came from. The way he does that is through his grandfather, who apparently is from neither Pinpoint nor Washington, D.C. but taught Thomas how to get from the one to the other. It is interesting that Thomas, who portrays himself as extremely private throughout this book, seems to have gone on something of a media blitz lately, but that can in part be attributed to his desire to clear his (and therefore his grandfather's) name. The more interesting question (not answered) is why it hasn't happened earlier (since he seems to imply that he reached the conclusions of this book by the time he was nominated to the Court).
Wherever you come down on judicial philosophy or Justice Thomas personally, this is an important book. It is one man's explanation of the position that so many in this country apparently find so confusing and even dishonest: how a man can be both conservative and black and favor limits on the use of the Constitution as a means to racial equality (as opposed to racial justice). It is a reconciliation of three values of the Black South: spirituality, self reliance, and the love of one's own people. I happen to come down on Justice Thomas' side, but, even if I didn't, I would still recommend this book.