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I'm Down

by Mishna Wolff (Goodreads Author)

3.55 · rating details · 2,226 ratings · 572 reviews

Mishna Wolff grew up in a poor black neighborhood with her single father, a white man who truly believed he was black. “He strutted around with a short perm, a Cosby-esqe sweater, gold chains and a Kangol—telling jokes like Redd Fox, and giving advice like Jesse Jackson. You couldn’t tell my father he was white. Believe me, I tried,” writes Wolff. And so from early chi...more

Hardcover, 288 pages

Published May 26th 2009 by St. Martin's Press

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Mar 03, 2011

Jennifer rated it

Shelves: hardee-har-har, nonfiction, social-commentary, black-folk

I think that it was a very well-written book. It made me laugh, and think, throughout the entire story. Some felt that the book's message about race diminished as she talked more of class issues through her experiences. Why is it that people think that race & class, when dealing with White & Black people, can be separated? Often the two are intertwined simply because of the history of the nature of our relationship with each other and anyone who thinks otherwise is fooling themselves.

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May 04, 2010

Terry rated it

Shelves: memoir

Well, I read this in one day, so it must be pretty good...right? Eh, it was only okay. I felt like the story was more about class than it was about race. Tt's not like she connected to the people in her neighborhood AT ALL, so I don't feel like she was torn between two races, which is what the book is publicized as being about, as much as she was torn between her impoverished family and the private school she attended for smart (white) kids. Once she befriended people at her new school the kids ...more

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Jan 17, 2009

Diana rated it

Shelves: humorous, nonfiction

This memoir of a poor white girl growing up with a dad who thinks he is black (but really isn't) was not quite as funny as its hilarious cover but kept me entertained enough to finish it even though this is not a genre I love. Mishna Wolff grew up in a black neighborhood in Seattle with her younger sister living with their dad who took them to black Baptist churches, played dominoes with his black friends, and dated black women. She eventually joined a swim team and won a scholarship to a priva...more

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Aug 03, 2011

Rafi Bloch added it

This is a marriage between the writing style of Augusten Burroughs and the movie Bad News Bears. All the dysfunctional antics and deep pain of how family can scar is seen in this gripping memoir. There are laugh out loud moments, like when the main character, Mishna learns how to 'snap' at the local community center. She tries to prove her 'blackness' to her white father in joining the Satin Dolls, and all black girls' basketball team or by hanging out with girls named Nay-Nay in her neighbor...more

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Jul 26, 2011

Max J. rated it

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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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May 23, 2011

Samantha rated it

GENRE- MEMOIR

I'm Down is a memoir written by Mishna Wolff based on her life growing up as a white girl in a "wannabe" black family. Confident of being black, her white father raised Mishna and her sister in a very African American and Ghetto environment where the trend was to diss other people and speack with incorrect grammar. Having divorced parents, Mishna and her sister lived mostly with their father and stayed with their mother on the weekends. Growing up Mishna had a ...more

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Feb 19, 2011

Roberta rated it

A memoir by a woman who grew up in Seattle in the '80s, raised by a white father who truly seemed to think he was black. Mishna does everything to please him - turning herself inside out to be"down".

The book is snort your coke funny in places. I'm not surprised to hear that Wolff is a comedian. It's very sharply observed and her turn of phrase can be brilliant. The book is also sad and pathetic, especially when Mishna's dad fails to stand up for or acknowledge her for who...more

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Nov 21, 2010

Alice rated it

Shelves: memoir, african-american, quirky-humor

I sometimes get to read bestsellers in a timely fashion thanks to my brother, who buys them in the airport on business trips. This is one of those memoirs that will make you immediately call your parents and thank them for everything they did for yo ...more I sometimes get to read bestsellers in a timely fashion thanks to my brother, who buys them in the airport on business trips. This is one of those memoirs that will make you immediately call your parents and thank them for everything they di...more

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Nov 21, 2010

Sharon rated it

Shelves: non-fiction

I sometimes get to read bestsellers in a timely fashion thanks to my brother, who buys them in the airport on business trips. This is one of those memoirs that will make you immediately call your parents and thank them for everything they did for you - Mishna's parents are truly clueless. The hook of this story is that, although she and her family are white, they live in a neighborhood that is mostly black. In addition, her father identifies as black, and encourages his two daughters to do s...more

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Sep 06, 2010

Margaret rated it

Summary of Book:

Mishna Wolff grew up in a poor black neighborhood with her single father, a white man who truly believed he was black. “He strutted around with a short perm, a Cosby-esqe sweater, gold chains and a Kangol—telling jokes like Redd Fox, and giving advice like Jesse Jackson. You couldn’t tell my father he was white. Believe me, I tried,” writes Wolff. And so from early childhood on, her father began his crusade to make his white daughter Down.

Unfortunatel...moreSummary of Book:

Mishna Wolff grew up in a poor black neighborhood with her single father, a white man who truly believed he was black. “He strutted around with a short perm, a Cosby-esqe sweater, gold chains and a Kangol—telling jokes like Redd Fox, and giving advice like Jesse Jackson. You couldn’t tell my father he was white. Believe me, I tried,” writes Wolff. And so from early childhood on, her father began his crusade to make his white daughter Down.

Unfortunately, Mishna didn’t quite fit in with the neighborhood kids: she couldn’t dance, she couldn’t sing, she couldn’t double dutch and she was the worst player on her all-black basketball team. She was shy, uncool and painfully white. And yet when she was suddenly sent to a rich white school, she found she was too “black” to fit in with her white classmates.

I’m Down is a hip, hysterical and at the same time beautiful memoir that will have you howling with laughter, recommending it to friends and questioning what it means to be black and white in America.

My Review:
It's hard to find the right words to describe this book. It seems to me that when the author was telling her "story" she picked out the worst things in her father to describe (to show how "black" he was). His womanizing and lack of work ethic were not funny. His attitude towards his daughters and how he let his women treat his daughters was not funny. Many of the things that black families are trying to overcome are hysterical to this author... they weren't to me. Now I do understand not fitting in with your community and being moved to different schools to be challenged and people's attitudes toward you when this happens. Now some parts of the book were funny, like her stint with the basketball teams and some of her other antics trying to fit in. But I didn't find any of the book hysterical. Lucky it was a quick read!

Disclaimer: This was a book from my personal collection.

Love and Blessings!
Margaret(less)

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Aug 28, 2010

Gail rated it

I thoroughly enjoyed this memoir, set in Seattle in (I'm guessing) the '80s. However, I strongly disagree with the reviews on the back of the book, which call it "funny" or "hilarious." I did NOT find this book funny, although there may have been the occasional amusing moment. Rather, it is a sometimes cheerless story of trying to fit in while growing up. The author was a skinny young white girl in a black neighborhood, being raised by a white father who "thought he ...more

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Jan 31, 2010

Lesley rated it

Shelves: non-fiction, adult

This book has a great schtick (white man who wishes he was black tries to raise his daughter to be like him) but to me it's a lot more than just a schtick. Without being pedantic, it explores the question of what it means to be "black": Does it mean blowing off school to focus on "capping"? Playing the sax instead of the violin? Playing basketball instead of skiing? Does not liking Jody Watley make you racist? There are questions about class as well as race. There's a lot of ...moreThis book has a great schtick (white man who wishes he was black tries to raise his daughter to be like him) but to me it's a lot more than just a schtick. Without being pedantic, it explores the question of what it means to be "black": Does it mean blowing off school to focus on "capping"? Playing the sax instead of the violin? Playing basketball instead of skiing? Does not liking Jody Watley make you racist? There are questions about class as well as race. There's a lot of poignancy, but one of the most poignant parts is Mishna comparing her own unhappiness, which comes from never having enough to eat and riding around in the back of a van held together by wire, with that of her rich, white classmates, who have plenty to eat and all kinds of toys and the luxury to indulge in depression.

It also seemed to me that, while Mishna's upbringing was unique, much of what she goes through can be related to by anyone: wanting so much to gain your parent's love and approval while struggling to forge an identity of your own. The reason this works as a memoir instead of just a series of painfully funny vignettes is that she does indeed forge an identity--or at least figure out that she gets to be the one to forge it, rather than having it forged for her.

Maybe it helps that I grew up in the same part of Seattle, swimming at the same pool, playing sports at the same community center, although I was driven there from a different side of the neighborhood, with plenty to eat and no pressure to be anything other than what I was.

I found myself anxious to find out what happened to Mishna after high school and hope that the fact she was able to write such a thoughtful reflection means she made it. The perspective is very much that of the child she was when all these things were happening to her, with none of the benefit of an adult's wisdom that would alleviate any of the guilt she felt for not living up to her father's standards, but you know she did eventually figure it all out.(less)

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Jan 31, 2010

Jennifer Dixey rated it

Shelves: memoir

Mishna Wolff gives an honest accounting of a rather remarkably mixed-up time in her life. She claims that her father believed he was black, although he was clearly white. He raised Mishna and her little sister, Anora, to fit in with their neighbors in a nearly all-black neighborhood in Seattle. Or rather, he tried to. While Anora's life was all double-dutch smooth sailing, Mishna couldn't seem to fit in no matter how hard she tried. And just when she was starting to get the hang of inner-city st...moreMishna Wolff gives an honest accounting of a rather remarkably mixed-up time in her life. She claims that her father believed he was black, although he was clearly white. He raised Mishna and her little sister, Anora, to fit in with their neighbors in a nearly all-black neighborhood in Seattle. Or rather, he tried to. While Anora's life was all double-dutch smooth sailing, Mishna couldn't seem to fit in no matter how hard she tried. And just when she was starting to get the hang of inner-city style "cappin'" (an activity an earlier generation called "playing the dozens"), Mishna was forced to change schools to be among her "gifted" peers. Nearly all white, privileged, bored and depressed, this new group seemed no more welcoming than the first. Navigating her way through these waters - living in one world and going to school in another - Mishna Wolff emerged with a strong sense of self and a gift for recalling how it feels to be a kid. Both are entertainingly on display in this book, a near-perfect memoir of a mishmash childhood.

The only reason I am giving it 4 stars instead of 5 is that its light tone is sometimes a tad too light - as when she inserts photos of people she grew up around, but doesn't name them individually, instead seemingly glossing them all as "black folks". Which leaves the reader with the impression that at this distance from her childhood, the people she grew up around don't seem quite real to her now. Given the premise of the book, this is more than a little discomfiting, especially once her stepmother Yvonne starts accusing Mishna of being a "racist". You sort of have to agree with Yvonne a little bit.

She is also curiously silent on her father's true ethnicity - although it is clear as bell, based on everything from his photos in the book, to the area's demographics (his family was from the Seattle neighborhood of Rainier Valley, which, before it was a black neighborhood, was a Jewish one), to Mishna's own name. One wonders why her father was trying so hard to escape his real ethnic and religious background (he insisted on the family attending black Baptist churches), but this is left entirely out of the story. As is, oddly, an entire summer spent in France on what was presumably a student exchange; its only role in the book is to set up a situation in which Mishna "owes" her parents the price of the trip and is threatened with working at McDonald's to pay it. The trip itself is given exactly one sentence.

Yet in spite of these omissions and quibbles, I found the story charming and compelling, and filled with bittersweet nostalgia, especially having lived in the Central District (the neighborhood directly north of Rainier Valley). For anyone who has spent time living in those environs, black or white, I suspect this memoir would hold interest and humor.(less)

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Nov 11, 2009

Jennifer rated it

Shelves: memoir

Book Overview

Mishna Wolff was born to white hippie parents in Vermont. However, when her family moves back to Seattle, her father drops the pretense of being "a white man" and becomes the "black man" he fancies himself to be. Having grown up in a predominantly black neighborhood during his childhood, Mishna's father immerses himself in the speech patterns, clothing and culture of his black friends. He expects his daughters to do the same. For Mishna's younger sister...more

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Jun 23, 2009

Lillian rated it

Shelves: nonfiction

I read this book cover to cover in one day. It kept me hooked throughout but left me with many questions. Mishna Wolff's harrowing childhood was defined by her struggle to fit in--first, as the lone white kid in her predominantly African-American neighborhood and later, as the lone poor kid in the predominantly white, upper class school she tested into. Wolff does a beautiful job capturing the vulnerability of being a kid; she makes the reader feel keenly the moments of painful embarrassment she...more

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Jun 22, 2009

Mike Lindgren rated it

Shelves: nonfiction

Mishna Wolff's I'm Down purports to be both a ragingly funny family-dysfunction memoir à la Sedaris or Burroughs, and a perceptive take on racial identity. It's neither, but that shouldn't stop Wolff, who was raised by a white single father in the black working-class town of Rainier Valley, Washington, from making hay with this slight but basically sweet-tempered memoir.

Wolff's book has the contours of the classic coming-of-age tale, wherein the awkward and put-upon duckling triumphs...moreMishna Wolff's I'm Down purports to be both a ragingly funny family-dysfunction memoir à la Sedaris or Burroughs, and a perceptive take on racial identity. It's neither, but that shouldn't stop Wolff, who was raised by a white single father in the black working-class town of Rainier Valley, Washington, from making hay with this slight but basically sweet-tempered memoir.

Wolff's book has the contours of the classic coming-of-age tale, wherein the awkward and put-upon duckling triumphs over a series of endearing mishaps and eventually turns into a swan (the marketing copy identifies Wolff, ominously, as a "humorist and former model"). In Mishna Wolff's case, a background of legitimately harrowing but otherwise unremarkable poverty was made distinctive by her father's insistent adoption of all the hallmarks of urban African-American culture, including the flamboyant clothes, the jewelry, the aggressively ungrammatical argot and the emphasis on toughness and contempt for authority. The result, according to Wolff, was a comical decade-long reverse-passing drama and a childhood marked by substantial identity confusion.

Wolff mines this material for humor, but there's something weird and unintentionally telling going on here. The author treats her father's obsession as source material for rueful isn't-this-crazy comedy, but a man repeatedly putting his two young daughters in considerable danger to prove his "blackness" is, in fact, a sad and desperate spectacle. Other people understand this: John Belushi's famous imitation of Joe Cocker got its sting from the pathos inherent in the lengths white men will go to in order to demonstrate that they have "soul." Wolff's depiction of her father is startlingly tone-deaf, with what seems intended as a portrayal of harmless eccentricity often verging on the monstrous. Most readers, however jaded, don't think child abuse is funny.

The element of I'm Down that, almost incidentally, carries real force is not the racial appropriation but rather the depiction of relentless poverty. Wolff mentions off-handedly that she and her sister often lived for weeks on tapioca and watery corn bread; there's a poignant scene where the teenage author, who has unwittingly high-achieved herself into attendance at a posh private school, forces herself to share her classmates' disdain for the school lunches that she, half-starving, secretly craves. Wolff describes how she unapologetically latched onto her rich classmates in order to take advantage of their ski trips and European vacations and palatial beachfront homes full of sleek electronics and fully stocked kitchens, only to discard the same girls with contempt once they had served her purposes. A more reflective writer would surely see how sad this is, but Wolff races ahead to the next set piece, like the comic pro she is.

I'm Down is in many ways a catalogue of misplaced emphases and unintended literary effects (the prose, for one thing, is flat and clumsy, and the humor feels strained in the way that stand-up routines transferred to the page usually do), but one doesn't feel quite right blaming Mishna Wolff for this, exactly. One of the many irritating things about memoir as a genre is the way it makes special claims for itself, the way it seems to be criticism-proof. With a novel, a dyspeptic critic, especially one not unnerved by the daunting middle-class minefields of race and parenthood, can simply dismiss the lot as so much ill-conceived garbage. Since a memoir's power is ostensibly grounded in its truthfulness, however, it often feels that the only legitimate objection is to say, "this person's life is not interesting." The alternative, at least in this case, is only slightly less harsh: to say "you haven't done a good job extracting meaning from your life," or, "you don't understand the meaning of your own life." On Mishna Wolff's block, them's fighting words. I hope she doesn't "cap" me. —From The L Magazine, June 24, 2009

(less)

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Apr 12, 2009

Robin rated it

I'm skeptical about memoirs now. It wasn't just James Frey that made me skeptical. Since then, there have been many memoirs, both published and unpublished, that have proven to be false. So, while I very much liked this book, I'm not at all convinced that it was true. The beautiful thing is that it doesn't matter. If it is true, great. I can't wait to read the rest of the story. If it isn't true, great. I can't wait to read the rest of the story.

The writing was engaging ...more

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Oct 27, 2011

Chivon rated it

I definately recommend this book, it is a fast easy read. It isn't often that I laugh out loud while reading a book, but I found myself laughing out loud many times furing I'm Down. The story came to life and was easy to visualize everything going on. The tone of the writing was so realistic, while the story was written from the point of view of a small girl and then a teenager, it was believable and interesting.

Mishna faced many issues that lots of kids face, embarassing parents,...more

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Aug 15, 2009

Robin rated it

Shelves: biography-memoir, for-grown-ups, funny, sad

I have been wanting to read this for months! Through the magic of ILL, it is now mine. Tra-la.

This book is fascinating and mesmerizing. Wolff tells the story of her upbringing with amazing humor and calm. Throughout the book, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Her style is clearly funny, but her stories are full of such unfairness and the bewilderment of a child who simply is not being taken care of. From her perspective, no adult and no other child in her life has even bot...more

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Jun 24, 2011

Amy rated it

Memoir of a white family growing up in a black neighborhood in Seattle.

This is more about class differences than race, and it’s very much about distracted parenting. Mishna’s father is the dominant figure and the puzzle here. His overidentification with his black neighbors is charming, really, compared to the other characteristics that make him a book-worthy father. (and what did his neighbors think of him, I wonder . . . .)

Funny anecdotes about Mishna’s father enrolli...more

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Jul 25, 2011

Donisha rated it

I hated this book so much. I tried and tried to enjoy it but I just couldn't. I read it in it's entirety hoping the humor would come in at some point. Yea....it never happened. The premise sounded fantastic but the writing was flat. Nothing about this story was funny. More then anything it sounded so sad. She never fit in, she was treated like crap, she stood in the shadow of her younger sister, who always was "down" and could do no wrong and her dad treated her kinda crappy. The weird...more

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May 22, 2011

Tracey rated it

I'm glad Mishna Wolff wrote about the uncommon story of her childhood, though I don't feel like I got enough of it. In some ways, her experience featured a lot of the typical b.s. that parents put their kids through (divorce, empty promises, forced participation in sports), but all of that all-too-common stuff got filtered through Wolff's double life as a white girl living in an all-black neighborhood with a father who was, sounds like, convinced he was black. Reading about Wolff struggling to a...moreI'm glad Mishna Wolff wrote about the uncommon story of her childhood, though I don't feel like I got enough of it. In some ways, her experience featured a lot of the typical b.s. that parents put their kids through (divorce, empty promises, forced participation in sports), but all of that all-too-common stuff got filtered through Wolff's double life as a white girl living in an all-black neighborhood with a father who was, sounds like, convinced he was black. Reading about Wolff struggling to adapt to her parents' split and her sudden dunking into a new environment got painful fast. Fortunately, Wolff's humor tempers the ouch factor (though she really did sound pathetic at first), and, happily, she does adapt well (though never as well as her younger sister, who, it's obvious from the start, Wolff loves and doesn't blame for anything).

The memoir, such as it is, has a couple of problems. For one, it's shorter than I wanted. It cuts off in Wolff's early teens with no mention of what's gone on in her life since or how her former experience shaped her adulthood. Yes, I can see from the jacket bio she's a "former model" and a "humorist." Okay, that's nice, but did her childhood influence either of these choices? The memoir gets more like a novel toward the end and wraps up very much like one; I wish I could mean that in a good way.

The other, bigger problem with the memoir is that Wolff seems mad as hell--at her father, mainly--and grapples with keeping a lid on her anger hard. It's like, she's been furious with her dad, so she wrote this book about it, but she's trying not to say just how mad she is. The way the book wraps up tells me that Wolff wrote this in part to come to terms with her father, but her largely negative portrayal of him speaks louder to how furious she is with him still, on some deep level. I'm no psychoanalyst, but I know a formerly deeply hurt kid/angry adult still smarting when I see one. Wolff's still smarting. I would like to have read more about her life beyond the point where the book stops. Her life wasn't all about her dad and his choices, but her memoir certainly makes it seem that way.(less)

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Jun 20, 2009

Valerie rated it

Shelves: read-in-2009

This is Mishna's Wolff's memoir about her dad. Mishna and her family are white, but Mishna grew up in a poor black neighborhood. And, her father thought he was black. He used to be a hippie, but when they moved to the new neighborhood, he cut his hair and got a curly perm. Mishna found herself "too white" for the kids in her neighborhood, and when she transfers to a "rich school," she doesn't fit in there either because she's poor and "too ghetto." I really enj...more

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Oct 29, 2010

Kirsti rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: anger, eccentricity, humor, memoir, nonfiction, sarcasm, sports, young-adult

Mischna Wolff's parents were white hippies. Then they moved from Vermont to Washington state, where her mom became a bus driver and her dad tried to become black. I'll give four stars to any memoir that lets me live in the author's world for a little while, and this book did that for me. This author is kind of the distaff Dalton Conley.

Wolff faces some difficult situations--poverty, hunger, divorced parents, intermittent neglect, severe anxiety, and a frequently vicious stepmother wh...more

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Oct 26, 2009

Cerealflakes rated it

This was an interesting memoir about a caucasian girl who grew up in an African American neighborhood in South Seattle. The book jacket makes this book sound like it's about race relations, which it is, but it's also about the role of education within a family. Mishna is found to be gifted and is entered into the gifted program in Seattle Public Schools by her mother who is her non custodial parent. She lives with her father, who does not care about her education. He want his daughter to be ...more

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Oct 06, 2011

Rebecca rated it

Interesting autobio. White girl, white family whose dad chose for them to live in "the projects of Seattle". After her parents divorced, she and her younger sister lived with their father in a run down part of town and the girl just never adapts. She tests into a smart school and goes, but her father makes fun of her for it. The story made it sound quit abusive. Not physical, but definitely verbal, which can be just as bad for a kid. It wasn't until she found swimming that she really f...more

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Jan 02, 2010

Rachel rated it

Shelves: biography-memoir

I approached this book with trepidation mainly because it's marketed as the story of a white girl who grew up in a poor black neighborhood in Seattle (or as some reviewers have mistakenly called it, an "all black neighborhood"), when no such neighborhood exists. Wolff lived with her father and sister in the Rainier Valley area of the city, which, although it has always had the largest black population in Seattle (along with Rainier Beach and the Central District), it's always been a r...moreI approached this book with trepidation mainly because it's marketed as the story of a white girl who grew up in a poor black neighborhood in Seattle (or as some reviewers have mistakenly called it, an "all black neighborhood"), when no such neighborhood exists. Wolff lived with her father and sister in the Rainier Valley area of the city, which, although it has always had the largest black population in Seattle (along with Rainier Beach and the Central District), it's always been a racially mixed working-class neighborhood. Having grown up myself in the neighborhood to Rainier Valley's immediate west, which has similar demographics, I spent my share of time in Wolff's old stomping grounds. Out of curiosity, I did some checking to see what the racial makeup of Rainier Valley is now, and it's roughly 20% black, 30% Asian, 38% white, and 12% "other." If anything, I would say that this is a larger black population and smaller white population then existed in the 1980s, when the book is set.

Having said that, however, South Seattle is no melting pot. Self-segregation is the norm, and Wolff's father, having decided to be black even though his melanin said otherwise, no doubt created a social circle around himself and his daughters that was almost if not entirely black. Thus, I don't doubt Wolff felt an acute otherness because she was white, but this was a situation created more by her father's choices than by reality. When she says, "there were virtually no whites. There were the occasional middle-class white hippies who moved onto our street to escape bougie-ness, but they usually moved away when they had kids," this is simply not true. I believe she remembers it that way and maybe it contains some truth with respect to her particular street, but for the Rainier Valley neighborhood as a whole, it's inaccurate.

I was also put off initially when she called herself a "honky" and talked about an incident when she was six where a group of slightly older girls repeatedly called her "whitey." It was, to paraphrase Michelle Obama, like something someone who only knew black people from watching The Jeffersons would come up with. On the other hand, when she says she was called a "marshmallow turd," or compared nonsensically to a "broke-down Teddy Ruxpin" doll? That sounds about like the kind of shit kids would say. So early on, there are things that ring very true and others very false, but I don't think Wolff is lying. I think that -- as in any good story -- there are embellishments, but I also think she means it when she says she wrote this from her perspective growing up.

The book is also marketed as a memoir that will "have you howling with laughter," but mostly, it made me angry. Wolff dedicates the book to her parents and thanks them for her childhood, but because the story ends when she is 14, I have to assume they became better parents after that time because they were decidedly ill-equipped before then. Her father was more concerned with hanging out with his friends and not being embarrassed by his kids (primarily Mishna), and her mother more with her own self-preservation and sense of herself than either of them were with parenting. When Wolff's parents divorced, her father retained sole custody, despite the fact that he never worked, turned their house into a case study on building code violations, and rarely bought food or fed Mishna or her little sister Anora. The girls would get by eating out of a giant tub of Costco tapioca for a week or making Jiffy cornbread. He was often cruel to Mishna, repeatedly accusing her of selfishness for wanting to do her homework, or siding with his second wife who somehow made the dodgy logical leap that because a 14-year-old Mishna didn't want to quit the swim team to get a job at McDonald's, she must be a racist. As I was reading, I had the odd sense that I wanted to adopt poor Mishna, just so she could have a decent meal and not get irrationally screamed at all the time.

Nonetheless, underlying it all is a sense of Wolff's forgiveness for her father's limitations. In the final quarter of the book, after Mishna has moved into her mostly absent mother's home, she and the reader are able to see her father (and even her awful stepmother Yvonne) in a new and sympathetic light. Wolff shows a tremendous generosity of heart to people who didn't, or maybe couldn't, extend the same to her, making I'm Down a coming-of-age story in the truest sense. (less)

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Oct 05, 2009

Sara rated it

Shelves: 2009-2010-school-year, memoir

Mishna Wolff is hilarious. She writes with an ease, that makes the reader comfortable; it's really, a refreshing book.
I'm Down, is a wonderfully crafted memoir. Wolff tells of the complications that come along with not getting "it" and the perils of not being cool. She struggles to understand the string of women who enter her fathers' life, and his decision to settle down with a women (girl, is more like it--she was only nine years older than Mishna, and twenty-three at the time...more

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Mar 27, 2011

Maya rated it

I was afraid I'd be annoyed by this book, but actually I quite enjoyed it. It was very funny. And it was a lot about class issues, too. The author was very sophisticated in terms of understanding people, and I enjoyed her observations. I felt this was a book anyone who tried to fit in to different groups would be able to understand and appreciate, which, I think (maybe wishful thinking) is almost everyone.

One of the funny things was when she's waiting for her Dad and sister (I thou...more

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May 09, 2010

Amy rated it

Mishna Wolff narrates her childhood as she tried to find her way in a Seattle suburb where she was a minority. A white girl. This book is written very honestly and splashed with some very funny moments as well as heartbreaking ones. Navigating one's way through childhood and figuring out one's identity is not an easy task especially when she is white and awkward in an all black neighborhood. It's funny how I could relate to certain things like learning how to cap, or tell your momma joke as they...more

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