High Yella, Steve Majors
High Yella, Steve Majors
3 Rating(s)
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

High Yella
A Modern Family Memoir

Author: Steve Majors

Narrator: Terrence Kidd

Unabridged: 9 hr 54 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/16/2021

Synopsis

They called him "pale faced or mixed race" or "light, bright, almost white." But most of the time his family called him "high yella." Steve Majors was the white passing, youngest son of an all-Black family that struggled with poverty, abuse, and generational trauma. High Yella is the poignant account of how he tried to leave his troubled childhood and family behind to create a new identity, only to discover he ultimately needed to return home to truly find himself and help his two adopted Black daughters find their own place in the world.

In his remarkable and moving memoir, Majors gathers the shards of a broken past to piece together a portrait of a man on an extraordinary journey toward Blackness, queerness, and parenthood. High Yella delivers its hard-won lessons on love, life, and family with exceptional grace.

About Steve Majors

Steve Majors is a former television news journalist who worked for media organizations such as NBC News and most recently for mission-driven national nonprofits. His essays on race, culture, and identity have been published in the New York Times, Washington Post, and other outlets. Currently he is vice president of marketing for a national education nonprofit serving marginalized students. He lives in suburban Maryland with his family.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Katherine on November 23, 2021

This is an amazing story - you won’t be able to stop thinking about it long after you finish reading. If you met Steve Majors as an adult you’d have had no clue of his troubled past. He is a very talented writer who shares what it was like growing up in an impoverished black family, his difficult re......more

Goodreads review by Sherry on October 15, 2021

HIGH YELLA A stirring narrative (it reads like fiction). High Yella captures the complexity of identity bound and defined by a history of separation which is sometimes known, but often just a bleak shadow. But like most good fiction, Major’s memoir has a hero, but the hero’s journey is not a straight......more

Goodreads review by Tara Gordon on February 03, 2022

BLACK HISTORY MONTH This book has profoundly changed me. The "characters" I met in this book will stay with me for life. The topics this book speaks to are wide ranging: race, poverty, identity, adoption, addiction, child molestation, death, and the bond of family, whether it's the family you were bo......more

Goodreads review by carol on December 10, 2022

Messed up family is still family.......more

Goodreads review by Pam on September 20, 2021

I have always been fascinated with characters fictional and real who navigate the world via passing and/or code-switching. "High Yella: A Modern Family Memoir" is a powerful account of it's author's long struggle to figure out just exactly who he is and where he belongs. The youngest of 5 growing up......more

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