Download Ebook Finding Samuel Lowe: China, Jamaica, Harlem, by Paula Williams Madison
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Finding Samuel Lowe: China, Jamaica, Harlem, by Paula Williams Madison
Download Ebook Finding Samuel Lowe: China, Jamaica, Harlem, by Paula Williams Madison
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Review
“How Madison ultimately connects with her grandfather’s descendants in China will produce more OMG moments than any prime-time drama on cable or Netflix could ever hope to elicit.” (Essence)“A well-structured memoir told in brief, punchy vignettes alternating between past and present.” (Kirkus Reviews)Finding Samuel Lowe is simply the most exciting, daring and brilliant memoir I’ve read in the 21st century.” (Kiese Laymon)“Told through an intimate family portrait this story is a moving account of a vivid historic migration; an unyielding and dogged journey of the human spirit.” (Walter Mosley)“This is an extraordinary story of identities lost and found. Paula Madison’s audacious search illuminates not only her own family’s story, but a lost world of the Chinese diaspora in the Caribbean, Jamaica’s mixing bowl of race and culture, and Harlem’s melting pot of talent and ambition.” (Ben Jealous, Former President and CEO, NAACP)“From one corner of the world to another, from one culture to another, Madison expertly brings family together, showing that all of humanity is attached by a thread of love. This emotionally rich story is a must-read, to be sure.” (Harriette Cole, author of Jumping the Broom)“A fascinating family memoir that peeks inside the life of a 1960s Harlem kid, takes readers back a century to Jamaica, and then reads like a detective story... Madison writes with such passion that it’s a treat to see how finding her grandfather means finding herself.” (The Bookworm Sez)“This memoir is a quick, fascinating read that sheds light on a little-known aspect of cross-cultural history.” (Bustle)
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From the Back Cover
This powerful debut tells the story of Paula Williams Madison's Chinese grandfather, Samuel Lowe. He became romantically involved with a Jamaican woman, Paula's grandmother, and they lived together modestly with their daughter in his Kingston dry goods store, Chiney Shop. In 1920 his Chinese soon-to-be wife arrived to set up a "proper" family. When he requested to take his three-year-old daughter with him, Paula's jealous grandmother made sure that Lowe never saw his child again. That began an almost one-hundred-year break in their family.Years later, the arrival of her only grandchild raising questions about family and legacy, Paula decided to search for Samuel Lowe's descendants in China. With the support of her brothers and the help of encouraging strangers, a determined Paula eventually pieced together her grandfather's life, following his story from China to Jamaica and back.Her amazing search is vividly rendered. Paula has produced an emotional memoir that travels from Toronto to Jamaica to China. Using old documents, digital records, and referrals from the insular and interrelated Chinese-Jamaican community, she found three hundred long-lost relatives in Shenzhen and Guangzhou, China. She even located documented family lineage that traces back three thousand years to 1006 BC. Her wonderfully warm elders, all born in Jamaica and raised in China, shared the history and accomplishments of the Lowes in the East and the West, as well as the hardships and persecution suffered by her capitalist grandfather during the Communist era and the Cultural Revolution.Finding Samuel Lowe is a remarkable journey about one woman's path to self-discovery. It is a story about love and devotion that transcends time and race, and a beautiful reflection of the power of family and the interconnectedness of our world.
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Product details
Hardcover: 288 pages
Publisher: Amistad; 1st Edition edition (April 14, 2015)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9780062331632
ISBN-13: 978-0062331632
ASIN: 0062331639
Product Dimensions:
6 x 1 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.5 out of 5 stars
45 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#156,908 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Paula Williams Madison has accomplished an extraordinary feat: in one book and a few short years, she has brought together the history of her family, the society that is Jamaica, the history of the Hakka people of China and her own evolving understanding of a globe crisscrossed long before our time. The intensity of her telling of the search for her mother's Chinese father and her honesty in describing the broken relations as well as the mended ones make this an important book for those who seek to know what intercultural, interracial understanding might look like.
This memoir of Paula Williams Madison, an African American born and raised in Harlem largely by her mother of mixed African-Jamaican and Chinese decent, is an incredible story that is once highly touching and gripping. It is not necessarily a unique story, the search for one's roots to bring closure to endless wonderment about one's ancestors and lineage, but it's a lot better written than most in expressing and understanding why the urge to source these roots is so strong in those who lack this connection.In the case at hand the author knew of her mother's Jamaican past and that she was part Chinese but any real knowledge of her maternal grandfather who bears the name in the title was piecemeal at best and a confounding mystery at worst. Suffice it to say that the author weaves a very readable account of how she went about her search, ladling in along the way some interesting factoids and history about the emigration of Chinese Hakkas to other lands during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Highly entrepreneurial and business savvy, Hakkas often became very successful merchants in foreign lands and such was the case for Samuel Lowe. The search for Samuel Lowe begins in Jamaica and from there moves to Shenzhen and Guangzhou in China, roughly the ancestral home of the Hakka's and the Lowe's.There are many poignant moments in the book, starting with the author's upbringing in Harlem. Her mother could be the stuff of a novel. Her Jamaican antecedents the raw material for a doctoral dissertation in sociology. What really brings the story home is the author's almost aside that for most African Americans family genealogy that is truly traceable may date back three or four generations. By contrast, in China family lineage may go back hundreds of generations. By the author's calculation her Chinese family can count 159 generations or roughly a thousand years before the birth of Christ. It's mind boggling.Finding Samuel Lowe is an easy read, being well organized and having a goodly mix of family story telling, history, sociology, mystery and intrigue. It takes a special person to pursue a family past shrouded deeply in vagueness. The author, though, is not just another ordinary person pursuing her roots. She brought to the search some real advantages including a mother that was relentless in the welfare and future success of her three children, a highly successful career in journalism and television, a husband that faithfully supported the near single-minded investigative work to locate the Chinese side of the family, and the Chinese family itself whose members embraced the author and her Jamaican and New York family from the get go. Think about that for a moment. A knock on the door (actually an email out of the blue) and then someone claiming to be your long lost relation that you didn't know you had in the first place. It is all these elements that keep you glued to the book's pages.My only critical observation is that once Samuel Lowe (long deceased before his descendants were located by the author) and family are found and a rightful narrative about the Chinese family in the years from the 1930s (including some tough observations by the author of Mao's Cultural Revolution in the 1960s) is provided, the story starts to run out of steam as the author focuses on family reunions that just don't add to the story. Memoirs oftentimes evolve to the overly sentimental and while it's not excessive here it probably best could have been edited out.
This is a timeless story of loss, heartache, reunion, and joy.In telling the story of her mother, Nell Lowe Williams, and her grandfather, Samuel Lowe, Paula Williams Madison also tells the tale of so many immigrant families who lose their connection with their homeland. The difference is that in this instance, the storyteller is also an extremely accomplished journalist and entrepreneur who doggedly sets out to find her Chinese roots, to delve deeper into her Jamaican roots, and to share the history that helped to shape her family's experiences.This book is the incredible record of a woman who is 1/4 Chinese, 3/4 Jamaican and 100% American.Read this; you will love it too.
If you travel the Caribbean, you don't have to go far to see shops and stores owned by Asians. What few travelers realize is that certain groups like the Chinese have lived in the Caribbean for generations and had families that crossed ethnic boundaries.This is the compelling, beautifully written journey of one African-Caribbean-American family to find their grandfather Samuel Lowe. Although they are too late to meet their grandfather, they are able to get to know him through their relatives in China who knew about them!The book weaves the past with the present and touches on the future of the Lowe Clan.
This book was somewhat interesting, but very repetitive. I did not know of the connection between China and Jamaica. This book was a selection from Silicon Valley Reads 2019 along with two other books on the theme of family and heredity.
really found very touching certain childhood vignettes in the stories that reflected racial differences that only made sense when they occurred again with their own children...happened to me...loved the positive message...what a great family despite all they have been through
My Paternal ancestry in Han People living in China Paternity done by African Ancestry.com results received August 27,2010! 100% match!
Really good and detailed. I didnt understand why she focussed so much on her chinese side. I guess as a Jamaican i was a bit biased and felt like she was ignoring her Jamaican side, then i remembered that both of her parents were Jamaican. I sometimes forget that most Jamaicans have ancestors from somewhere other than africa. We tend to ignore the other ancestors we have as if they aren't a part of our blood but the reality is that they are part of us. This book was lovely to read because it explored ancestors that i as a Jamaican usually ignore.
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