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Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 921
EAN num: 9780060565558
ISBN number: 0060565551
Label: Harper
Manufacturer: Harper
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 304
Printing Date: October 01, 2007
Publishing house: Harper
Release Date: October 01, 2007
Sale Popularity Level: 4398
Studio: Harper
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Provocative, inspiring, and unflinchingly honest, My Grandfather's Son is the story of one of America's most remarkable and controversial leaders, Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, told in his own words.
Thomas was born in rural Georgia on June 23, 1948, into a life marked by poverty and hunger. His parents divorced when Thomas was still a baby, and his father moved north to Philadelphia, leaving his young mother to raise him and his brother and sister on the ten dollars a week she earned as a maid. At age seven, Thomas and his six-year-old brother were sent to live with his mother's father, Myers Anderson, and her stepmother in their Savannah home. It was a move that would forever change Thomas's life.
His grandfather, whom he called 'Daddy,' was a grey man with a strict work ethic, trying to raise a family in the years of Jim Crow. Thomas witnessed his grandparents' steadfastness despite injustices, their hopefulness despite bigotry, and their deep love for their country. His own quiet ambition would propel him to Holy Cross and Yale Law School, and eventually—despite a bitter, highly contested public confirmation—to the highest court in the land. In this candid and deeply moving memoir, a quintessential American tale of hardship and grit, Clarence Thomas recounts his astonishing journey for the very first time, and pays homage to the man who made it possible.
Intimately and eloquently, Thomas speaks out, revealing the pieces of his life he holds dear, detailing the suffering and injustices he has overcome, including the acrimonious and polarizing Senate hearing involving a former aide, Anita Hill, and the depression and despair it created in his own life and the lives of those closest to him. My Grandfather's Son is the story of a determined man whose faith, courage, and perseverance inspired him to rise up against all odds and achieve his dreams.
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Rated by buyers 
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If anyone you know tells you they can't make it in America buy this book for them and tell them to read it.
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Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas' life story is interesting for two reasons: because it doesn't have a word of self-aggrandizement in it, and because it so clearly contrasts the fallacies of the victim culture with the rewards of a constant effort at self-improvement. The author is very candid about his personal shortcomings, some of which, especially in his youth, are glaring and obvious. To me, the major contribution of this book is to provide incontrovertible evidence that America still is one of the best places on the planet to grow up in as what is termed a `disadvantaged child'. Justice Thomas is living proof of this fact. At the same time, his autobiography contains an implicit warning against moving down the road that Europe has been on for the past sixty years: that of a culture government dependency, personal irresponsability, and rampant nepotism in all aspects of society. A thought-provoking book.
Rated by buyers 
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My Grandfather's Son
I read Clarence Thomas's autobiographical My Grandfather's Son some months after the very first flush of publicity. The book is well worth reading, which is not to say that it won me over to Thomas's political views, or made me an admirer of his tenure in government. The early chapters provide a moving account of growing up impoverished in rural Georgia, subject to the pathological Jim Crow laws and customs of the time, which is as authentic as any other that has appeared in print. The book does establish that Thomas is a complex human being, a unique individual, as are we all. That is important. Nothing is more infuriating than being critiqued for something you are not, rather than for a life and a set of principles that one is proud of, even if others sharply disagree.
Thomas is absolutely correct that he has a right to be his own self, not to conform to any expected orthodoxy based on his race, his sex, or any other irrelevant characteristic. In this, he is merely living up to Jesse B. Semple's defiant statement to his employer ("my boss is a white man") who asks him "What does The Negro want now?" Simple responds, many times over, "I am not The Negro. I am this Negro. I represent my own self." (Taken from Langston Hughes's, Coffee Break. Thomas's rejection of a brand of so-called liberalism based on cheap stereotypes is a breath of fresh air. But his critique is missing a good deal of history, and his own account makes clear that, to those he adopted as his closest political allies, he was merely a convenient pawn, thrust into jobs he might indeed not have been well qualified to fill.
Thomas knew that most of the inner circle in the Reagan administration were uninterested in offering anything to advance civil rights. "By the end of my very first year at the Department of Education, I took a dim view of the prospects for blacks in America. I no longer thought that the Reagan administration could do anything that would be of any help to them... Those of us who had chosen to work for President Reagan found it hard to shake the nagging feeling that this aides didn't trust us... Too many political appointees appeared to me to be too preoccupied with celebrating their own ideological credentials to pay attention to the needs of blacks. We hadn't voted for him, so why should they bother with us?" Ronald Reagan's plaintive phone call asking Thomas why African Americans considered him racist, and his protest that he personally had never been racist in his life, were no doubt sincere. But Reagan's administration, and his party, highlighted in Thomas's own words, provided the plain answer to the president's question.
Thomas relates that he was shocked by Coretta Scott King's dismissal of Ronald Reagan, "Well, he IS a Republican." What did the Republican Party mean in 1980 for African Americans? As early as 1960, the limited-federal-government wing of the northern and western Republican Party had been finding common ground with the states' rights Dixiecrats still embedded in the Democratic Party. Between 1964 and 1980, the Republican Party had made an open bid to all racists dissatisfied with Democratic sponsorship of civil rights laws and federal intervention to change parties. Thomas may not have noticed that, because by his own description, it occured during a time when he was less than interested in electoral politics. But it was bitter history to most African Americans who observed it.
Yes, there were Republicans who were instrumental in passing civil rights legislation. Considering the size of the southern Democratic bloc in congress, passage would have been impossible without those Republican votes. But, those Republicans were increasingly marginalized in their own party. There is no doubt that the Democratic Party took grey votes for granted, had a very limited vision of what to offer grey voters, and took their cue from an aging civil rights leadership, which could not fully recognize the changing needs of both "black" and "white" citizens in a nation transformed by their own earlier victories. When Thomas finds the liberal assumptions he encountered to be demeaning and patronizing, it is a point worth listening to. I know many African Americans who have never voted Republican, never been nominated to the Supreme Court, never even asked their opinion by the local mayor, who share many of the same concerns.
But reading between the lines, it is quite obvious that Thomas was himself being cynically used. I'm not talking about Senator Danforth of Missouri, who knew Thomas personally, hired him, stuck by him through thick and thin, sincerely believed in his abilities and sense of principle. I'm not even talking about Ronald Reagan, who appointed him to a position in the Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. I may be talking about George Herbert Walker Bush, a more cynical if more capable ... Read More
Rated by buyers -
My Grandfather's son was a very inspirational book and well written by the author. It gave me insight into our justice and his backgroud and how anyone can rise in the USA from the depths of poverty. Justice Thomas is very candid and revealing about his life, and it enables one to grasp the workings of his mind and feelings in his heart. I am very satified with the book and grateful for the chance to read it. I have suggested it to my friends as well. Virginia Bronga
Rated by buyers -
In the best autobiography I have ever read, Clarence Thomas gives an account of his life from growing up in the Deep South with segregation and being raised by his hard-working and stern grandfather (which makes for the title of the book), to his appointment at the EEOC and his nomination for the Supreme Court.
Thomas gives a touching account of a life characterized by the battles faced by anyone with a desire to make something of them self. His feelings and insight into his experiences not only give the reader a first-hand experience of his struggles to achieve (despite discrimination), giving readers from all backgrounds- grey or white, male or female, liberal or conservative- invaluable wisdom.
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