Bigmama Didn't Shop At Woolworth's
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: College Station Texas USA
Number of pages: 186
Subjects: Memories of Grandmother
Genres: memoir
First sentence: Despite the imagery suggested by the name Candy Hill, in the 1950s there was little that was sweet or playful about the maze of unpaved roads, narrow trails, and mosquito-infested drainage ditches that led to and from the neighborhood's rows of mostly shotgun houses with outdoor toilet.
Description: Not just because things cost more there than from the hawker who drove through the Candy Hill neighborhood from time to time, but because in the 1950s black shoppers were not very welcome in white Texas towns like Bryan. Sunny Nash was Bigmamma's granddaughter, and through her young eyes she saw not only the indignities and economic hardships her family and friends suffered - unpaved roads, mosquito-infested drainage ditches and outdoor toilets, back stairs to balcony seating in the movies - but also the love and warmth of everyday life in the segregated neighborhood. In the tradition of To Kill a Mockingbird, yet more stirring because of its real-life perspective, she tells her story of a time before the civil rights movement of the 1960s with immediacy and poignancy.