Russell Baker

Russell Baker chronicles his own life in the autobiographical memoir Growing Up, and he also chronicles his mother's life, as he knows it. Russell is a small boy when he lives in Morrisonville, and he remembers it with the nostalgia of youth. Morrisonville is a place of hard work and suffering, but it is also a place where the family gathers on the porch in the evening, talking in time-honored clichés. Russell's deep love of family gathering together appears in his description of these evening conversations, as well as the similar scenes of evening conversations that take place in Uncle Allen's kitchen over pots of coffee, after Russell has gone to bed. His first true writing success shows his love of family, too. It is an essay on the eating of spaghetti, inspired by a family meal in his Uncle Allen's household.

Russell wants to be...