He Included Me: The Autobiography of Sarah Rice

by Sarah Rice, Louise Westling (Editor)

Overview

A rare first-person account of life in the twentieth-century South, He Included Me weaves together the story of a black family—eight children reared in rural Alabama, their mother a schoolteacher, their father a minister—and the emerging self-portrait of a woman determined, like her parents, to look ahead.

Sarah Rice recalls her mother's hymn of thanks—"He Included Me"—when God showed her a way to feed her family, and hears again her mother's quiet words, "It's no disgrace to work. It's an honor to make an honest dollar," spoken when her children were embarrassed that she took in white people's laundry. Rice speaks, finally, of the determination, faith, and pride that carried her through life.

In a document that spans more than three-quarters of the twentieth century, He Included Me presents the voice of a single woman whose life was rich in complexity, deep in suffering and joy; yet it also speaks for the many black women who have worked and struggled in the rural South and always looked ahead.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780820343563
Publisher:	University of Georgia Press
Publication date:	10/07/2020
Series:	Brown Thrasher Books Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
Sales rank:	608,140
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Sarah Rice (Author)
SARAH RICE (1909–2006) lived and worked in Alabama and Florida, holding jobs as a teacher and a domestic maid and cook. She was also active throughout her life in state and local church activities. Rice told the story of her life to Louise H. Westling, the daughter of one of her former employers and now a professor emerita of English at the University of Oregon.

Louise H. Westling (Editor)
LOUISE H. WESTLING is a professor of English at the University of Oregon. She is the author or editor of several books, including Sacred Groves and Ravaged Gardens.

Editorial Reviews

In homespun words, strong-minded Rice, born in 1909 in rural Alabama, bears witness to her hard life as a black woman. Warm and pleasantly meandering, this oral autobiography tells of her large, devoutly religious family, her schooling, marriages, work as a maid in the homes of whites in Florida and later as a teacher: ``Just to think that from my grandfather not being able to read or write, or his wife either, and coming up from slavery, all this family grew.'' Rice's comments on social and racial issues, especially when based directly on her experiences as an employee of white families, are instructive; sensitive yet objective, she proves able to reckon with differences, not just take sides. She seems always to say exactly what she means. With the aid of Westling ( Sacred Groves and Ravaged Gardens ), Rice makes a welcome contribution to the informal history of black Americans. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Now in her 80s, Rice has spent her life in the deep South. As a girl, she lived in small rural towns or on farms, as her father worked as an itinerant AME minister. As an adult, Rice labored at the jobs available in the South to a black woman with some education: as a teacher in segregated schools; as a domestic in white households; as a worker on an airforce base during World War II. This oral history, artfully edited by Louise Westling, allows Rice to speak for herself, describing life in rural Alabama, her life as a school teacher, her two failed marriages, and, finally, the happiness she achieved with her third husband. Viewing her life with a sharp intelligence, always frank, compassionate, and informed by a deep religious faith, Rice offers an autobiography that often reads with the narrative sweep of a novel. For both larger public libraries and history and African-American collections in academic libraries.-- Ann H. Sullivan, Tompkins-Cortland Community Coll., Dryden, N.Y.

Library Journal

Sarah Rice, a thrice-married, often impoverished black school teacher in the segregated rural schools of the South, tells a compelling, instructive, and otherwise unavailable story. It provides insight into black women struggling with the world of black males as well as with contemporary American society.

Choice

A moving autobiography. . . . Her unadorned but colorful narrative style is an unremitting delight, particularly for readers raised in the South.

Orlando Sentinel

A unique contribution to a growing history of African American women.

Atlanta History

In the oral history tradition of Theodore Rosengarten's All God's Dangers, which related the hardships of a black sharecropper in Alabama, Louise Westling's He Included Me reconstructs the difficult but dignified life of a black woman in Alabama and Florida during a large part of the twentieth century. It's a moving story that reveals a hidden corner of American life.

New York Times

A moving autobiography. . . . Her unadorned but colorful narrative style is an unremitting delight, particularly for readers raised in the South.

Orlando Sentinel