Also reviewed at Shelf Inflicted

I recently read Kathryn Stockett’s The Help and while I enjoyed this story tremendously, I wanted to read something that was less uplifting, more realistic, and told from the perspective of an African-American. Anne Moody’s powerful memoir was the perfect choice.

This is a well-told and fascinating story about the author's life growing up in rural Mississippi, and her fight against racism. Her story is chronologically told, from the author's youth in rural Mississ More...

There are many levels and layers to this book. Firstly, it is a story of a young African American girl and her early childhood and the poverty and struggles of her family in Mississippi. It is also a story of a fiery intelligent young women dealing with the racism, poverty and hatred that she encountered growing up in such a G-d forsaken place, the author's own struggles with her family ,and her search for autonomy. Most importantly it covers a portion of the history of the civil rights movement More...

A sad, sobering, down-to-earth look at the Civil Rights movement. The author does not claim to be a "writer," but an activist who wanted to tell her own story. With that in mind, this story was truly one that needed to be told. This book is required reading in some colleges. It provides us with an inside look at growing up in the south in the 50s and 60s - a painful aspect of American history that cannot be ignored. The author was a part of the famous sit-in at a Woolworth's lunch counter in Mis More...

“The revolution will put you in the driver's seat” (Gil Scott-Heron).

As a child in the United States, I was confronted every single February with what I thought was considered to be the civil rights movement. Through various novels I learned about slavery and the conditions on plantations around the world. I was taught that African-American's were given the right to vote in the United States in 1870 with the Fifteenth amendment but faced endless struggles actually making it to the ballots for th More...

I recently re-read this book, remembering it as one of the most important books in my life and the book that ultimately led to my decision to major in history in undergrad. and focus on Southern history. While it is hard to criticize this book because Moody's life trials are so profound, I found myself growing annoyed with this Moody on this second read; she is consistently self-absorbed and narcissistic throughout. To the point where her stories of activist work in the Civil Rights struggle too More...

Anne Moody's autobiography is a very matter-of-factly told tale of, as the title indicates, growing up in Mississippi. Particularly, Moody reveals the difficulties inherent in growing up poor and black in Mississippi in the mid-twentieth century.

The first half of the book is devoted to her childhood and high school years and is at times somewehat uninteresting (I don't really care about her winning Homecoming Queen, for instance), but it does show really clearly the depths of poverty that many More...

I knew nothing about this book before I randomly picked it off the shelf at the library...

...But I'm pleasantly surprised that it's an easy and interesting read. As Moody matter-of-factly recounts her childhood experiences in the deep south, starting from age six or so; as her understanding of her environment grows, so does her discontent, idealism and determination to work for change.

Portions devoted to describing how her own physical beauty, intelligence, courage and athletic skill was greate More...

This was a pretty remarkable book, one that truly grows on you as you follow Annie Moody through her life. What works about Coming Of Age is the juxtaposition of writing style and storyline. Moody lets her story unfold using an unsentimental, no-nonsense tone. While her early years growing up in a small rural Mississippi town in the '40s were not marked by violence, the early stirrings of the Civil Rights movement prompted a rapid and ruthless white repression of black civil rights. The spare na More...

EVERYONE needs to read this book. It's a true story of a young civil-rights activist. After she wrote the book, which you will not be able to put down once you start, she went into seclusion because many people bashed her for writing her story. It's heart-wrenching and hopeful. Anne Moody's courage is obvious and she never asks for your sympathy. You will learn so much from this book.

This book had all of the charm and the trappings of an autobiography. It gave an excellent, personal portrait of life in rural Mississippi in the 50's and 60's, making historical events like the rise of the KKK more meaningful than in any textbook, but it jumped around cronologically, gave poor explanations of events, and sometimes left out whole stretches of history. The most important aspect of this book is the illustration of the multiple layers of inequality; sexism, racism, colorism with ra More...

I am currently taking a civil rights class, and this book complements it nicely. So far, I am enjoying the book both because of the amazing determination the author shows in getting an education despite the odds, but also because of the incredibly frightening first-hand accounts of the horrors of racism in the Deep South in this time period.

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Now that I'm finished (silly school slowed me down a lot) the only thing I have to add is that I wish it hadn't ended where it did. I know she went on More...

i didn't know if i would be able to fully appreciate this autobiography. in college, i read so many memoirs and biographies that they began to lose their spirit for me. so i was a bit resistant to read this one. but i am so glad that i did. there's a way that anne moody draws you into her life ... it's so gripping, realistic, and compelling - that i felt the emotions that she wrote. by the end of the novel, i felt as exhausted as she wrote about - as if i had participated in all of movements. am More...

This book, detailing the childhood and young adult years of a black grassroots civil rights worker and exceptional student in Mississippi, is a fast and gripping read, even 45 years after it was first written. Anne Moody writes in a matter-of-fact voice about the almost unimaginable poverty and lack of consistent familial support in which she grew up, of her growing involvement with the civil rights movement in the early 1960s, and of the emotional toll it took on her. Her relentless depiction o More...

Story of a young African American girl, Annie Moody, growing up in poor, rural, racist Mississippi in the 40's and 50's. whole the family is as poor as possible, Annie is hugely smart. She excels at school, is a top athlete, and clearly stands out from her peers. She is able to find work as a maid working for white women in town, which alleviates her family's poverty a little.
However, these advantages also mean that unlikely of her peers, Annie understands just how bad the racism is that control More...

Coming of Age in Mississippi, the autobiography of Anne Moody is a long journey full of coincidental brushes with many moments that have shaped American history during the Civil Rights Movement. As such, Anne Moody’s story symbolically stands as evidence that there would have been no “movement” without the millions of people who marched, protested, and fought for their rights. Later in the book, Anne remarks about a march in Washington that drew millions of people; she was surprised to find she More...

A friend returned from a trip to Mississippi and bought me this book during her visit there. I looked forward to reading it because it promised an interesting first-hand perspective, that of Anne Moody, an insider in the civil rights movement or, as Sen. Edward Kennedy stated, "A history of our time, seen from the bottom up." I was greatly disappointed because it offered little insight.

The autobiography often read like a catalogue of events: I did this and then I did this and then. . . From my s More...

Anne live in a two room shack on a plantation with her parent and her sister. Her father leaves her mother for another women after her mother has a son. For the next six years Anne and her family move to six different houses. Its a hard life and her mother is always to odd jobs that leave the family hungry. Even though her family is having hard times Anne does exceptionally well in school. Anne finds out about the NAACP, she changes her name and starts getting involved in the civil rights movem More...

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. More...

I feel awful giving this book one star. I truly did want to like this book! I really did. But after nearly halfway through the book I just couldnt do it anymore. Im really not a fan of autobiographies because it usually isnt well-written at all. But every so often I will take a dive ito one because of my interest in the person or the subject. This I just couldnt do. It was a bunch of rambling on and on, it was inconsistent, and boring to say the least. The lack of description of emotion frustrat More...

Anne Moody in her memoir recounts growing up in the Jim Crow law south, as well as her involvement in the Civil Rights movement as a young adult. She was one of the women at the famous Woolworth's lunch counter sit-in. Here we get to see her first-hand thoughts and memories of the struggle growing up surrounded by institutionalized racism, as well as the difficulties in fighting it.

Here we get to see real-life, personal anecdotes that back up the studies into black history published in the 1990s More...

I read this after The Help because I knew it would certainly tie in with that book. I had to go to my books from a women's history course I took over 20 years ago. There are others dealing with black/white relations from that course that I may also read. As for this one, I was not impressed with her writing style, but I did learn from her experiences and those of the people around her. These experiences re-inforce and expand on the stories from The Help and,told as they were by a black woman, ca More...

This was an autobiography that Anne Moody wrote in the late 60s. She starts with her earliest growing up days in a hard life, poor and black in Mississippi, and she shares her own awakening not as a commentary, but vividly and emotionally as it happens to her. Her observations are frank and I think that the fact that it was written then, rather than looking back from the relative safety and calm of decades later, makes it a very powerful and frank discussion of her own involvement in the civil r More...

I never could decide if I liked this book or not. I can see its value for an America Since 1865 Survey course for sure because it gives a wonderful first hand account of one black woman's experience growing up in the deep South and how she got involved in the civil rights movement. However, it stops very early into the civil rights movement and, while it's a long book already, it leaves you feeling the story is unfinished. Admittedly, that is probably intentional, to re-enforce the idea of the u More...

This was actually a pretty good book. I thought it would be boring because I had to read it for my history class. It was interesting and insightful. I loved the sections about her childhood and into highschool.

An outstanding autobiography of a young African American girl growing up in the segregated deep South, and her journey to action in the Civil Rights Movement.

No matter how much you know of the general disaster that was the Jim Crow South, there is nothing like seeing it through the eyes of someone who was born into it, realized it, faced it, struggled against it, and worked to make a difference. If you haven't read something like this, I strongly recommend you add this to your reading list. It i More...

When I was student teaching, the students that I had were reading this book. So, if I wanted to teach them, I had to read it as well. I am usually not a fan of non-fiction books, but this book was just amazing. It is the story of a girl has the unfortunate fate of being born black and poor in Mississippi in the 1940s. However, as the Civil Rights Movment grows, so does she. She stands right at the forefront and, despite ending up on the FBI's most wanted list, she does everything in her power to More...

When you learn about the Civil Rights Movement as a child Martin Luther King Jr. is praised, the tragedy of John F. Kennedy mentioned, Rosa Parks championed. These scant references are accompanied by brief moments of black children getting attacked by police dogs and marching, marching towards freedom. Anne Moody, one of the young women who sat at Woolworth's lunch counter one afternoon and asked to be served, writes about a Civil Rights Movement that most know nothing about. The constant fear o More...

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.

Anne Moody has written an unforgettable autobiography of growing up as a poor black woman in the rural South. The book begins with Moody as a child playing with white children and not understanding how they differed from herself. As she grows older and comes into herself she is overcome by the differences that keep her separate. Moody is smart and motivated and makes her place in the world using her education. In the last section of the book Moody recounts the struggles of a young black woman fi More...