"Rachel Shilsky is dead as far as I'm concerned. She had to die in order for me, the rest of me, to live." Chap. 1, Dead, p. 2

"Her oddness, her complete nonawareness of what the world thought of her, a nonchalance in the face of what I perceived to be imminent danger from blacks and whites who disliked her for being a white person in a black world. She saw none of it." Chap. 2, The Bicycle, p. 5

"But there was a part of me that feared black power very deeply for the obvious reason. I thought black power would be the end of my mother. I had swallowed the white man's fear of the Negro, as we were called back then, whole." Chap. 4, Black Power, p. 19

"We attracted a lot of attention when we traveled because we were poor and Jewish and my mother was handicapped. I was real...