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    His Eye is on the Sparrow: An Engagement in Black and White
    His Eye is on the Sparrow: An Engagement in Black and White
    His Eye is on the Sparrow: An Engagement in Black and White
    Ebook45 pages38 minutes

    His Eye is on the Sparrow: An Engagement in Black and White

    By Ann Pearlman

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    About this ebook

    Once again, Ann Pearlman, author of Infidelity: a Love Story (nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and the National Book award, and the inspiration for a Lifetime movie) returns to memoir in His Eye Is On the Sparrow: An engagement in black and white. It’s 1962 in the Midwest. The civil rights movement has just begun. Ann, who is Jewish, and Ty, who is black, are college students in love, and excited to meet each other’s families. Along the way they encounter potentially violent, racially charged situations as their parents cope with their childrens’ places in the forefront of changes yet to come. Ty and Ann learn about each other’s community and family as they struggle with the realities of interracial relationship. And we, the readers, have a window into exactly how far we’ve come in the last half century in America. Or have we?
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherShe Writes Press
    Release dateJan 2, 2014
    ISBN9781940838021
    His Eye is on the Sparrow: An Engagement in Black and White
    Author

    Ann Pearlman

    Ann Pearlman is a writer of both fiction and nonfiction books, including Getting Free: Women and Psychotherapy and Keep the Home Fires Burning: How to Have an Affair with Your Spouse, Inside the Crips, The Christmas Cookie Club, and A Gift for My Sister. Her memoir, Infidelity, was nominated for a National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize and made into a Lifetime movie by Lionsgate. Also an artist, she recently illustrated a short story, Other Lives, which is available as an ebook. 

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      Book preview

      His Eye is on the Sparrow - Ann Pearlman

      Thanks for downloading a Shebook.

      To find out more about other great short e-books by and for women,

      click here, or visit us online at shebooks.net.

      Enjoy your read!

      Copyright © 2013 by Ann Pearlman

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.

      Cover design by Laura Morris

      Cover photograph from Shutterstock

      Published by Shebooks

      3060 Independence Avenue

      Bronx, NY 10463

      www.shebooks.net

      His Eye Is on the Sparrow

      An engagement in black and white

      On Good Friday, 1962, Ty and I travel from Iowa to Saginaw, Michigan, to visit his family. On the way, we hit a rib joint on 63rd and Cottage Grove, in Chicago. It’s seven o’clock at night, but up and down the street people bustle to buy groceries, clothes, toiletries. Women enter beauty parlors, men get their hair processed. Is this safe? You and me in Chicago? I ask because I’m white and he is black.

      He laughs. You kiddin? Chicago? Never. This is the only place where a woman tried to beat me up. Ty is in his senior year, a tackle and co-captain of the University of Iowa’s football team, which is number one in the nation. Ty is six-foot-two and two hundred and seventy pounds of muscle and was recently named All-American.

      Huh?

      A huge, bald-headed woman asked me for money. When I wouldn’t give it to her, she chased me down the street threatening to beat me up. He laughs again. Can you imagine? Me running from a woman waving her purse and screaming for money?

      He looks for a parking space. Hey, if she didn’t get me, no one can. We park Ty’s car, a ’48 Ford he bought for fifty dollars, under the El.

      The ribs here are almost as good as Ma’s and the sauce is so hot it’ll clean your sinuses. The rib joint is a smoldering grill with mustard-based sauces, a red vinyl bench for waiting customers, no tables. We get two rib sandwiches extra spicy—half slabs of ribs on bread and a side of slaw—and leave. We walk under the clashing, jangling El darkening the street back to our car and get in. The sandwiches, slaw, and Dr. Pepper are on our newspaper-covered laps. The deep ochre sauce covers my chin and fingers. The white fluffy bread—which I usually hate—is now flavored with ribs and sauce.

      We drive through Gary, Indiana, then start the zigzag up the Michigan palm to reach Ty’s family. There’s no easy way to traverse Michigan. The roads run north-south or east-west and we need a diagonal heading from the south west part of the state to the northeast. That road doesn’t exist So we crisscross the distance on two-lane blacktops through empty towns that slow our progress.

      There’s something comforting about moving in the night on a road with your lover while headlights form light streams to the horizon. There’s something comforting about the tree shadows with new leaves shushing in the breeze. Something comforting

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