Unafraid of the dark

In this Memoir, Rosemary Bray describes growing up poor in Chicago in the 1960s and becoming one of the first black women at Yale - and she shows why changes in the welfare system make it virtually impossible for her inspiring story to happen today. When Rosemary Bray's mother decides to apply for welfare, it creates a rift between her parents, and yet it proves to be the salvation of the family, enabling the Bray children to be educated - and education was the one thing her parents agreed upon as the only way to a better life. Bray writes movingly about her resourceful mother, who joins the Catholic church and shepherds the children to school. The nuns at the Catholic school spot Rosemary's potential and arrange for her to become one of the few black children at Parker, a predominantly white private school on the other side of Chicago. In a series of powerful vignettes, Bray describes the shock of discovering the discrepancies between her life and the lives of her affluent classmates. She writes of the experiences that gave her hope: a teacher fostering her development and choosing her to play the title role in Alice in Wonderland; the thrill of being accepted at Yale; falling in love; becoming a journalist; and, ultimately, becoming a mother.