Baring emotional wounds is never easy. Doing so eloquently is even less so. But by doing just that, Williams uses his personal journey to offer important insights into issues of race, identity, family and, ultimately, understanding.

-- Elissa Sonnenberg, A&S '88, assistant director of UC's journalism program
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It seems to me that in today's tell-all culture, bookshelves are weighty with memoirs of every stripe, most of which apparently require a rotten childhood at their cores. After all, didn't Frank McCourt say that a happy childhood is hardly worth your while? McCourt's "Angela's Ashes," however, distinguishes itself as exceptional autobiographical literature. For me, so does "Life on the Color Line."

In my reading of the book, what appears most vividly is Williams' embrace of his escape-and-return life, an honest recognition of the pathos and humor of his past that now shapes him as an adult. There is always this tiny spark of hope, either from his father or inside himself, that things can be better.

That is what I held onto as I turned page after page of his gut-wrenching descriptions of the poverty, racism and deplorable parenting he experienced. It takes a fair measure of courage to go back in memory to such a childhood.

-- Kevin Grace, MA (A&S) '77, UC head archivist
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In early November, UC's renowned pianist Awadagin Pratt played with acclaimed violinist Joshua Bell as part of the White House's "Evening of Classical Music." As President Obama and his family listened to the compelling strains of Maurice Ravel's gypsy music, "Tzigane," we might well have believed we had crossed over into some post-racial phase of our society. Boundary crossings frequently seem exotic to us, transforming our comfortably settled identity through the allure of new places and experiences.

What President Williams' memoir chronicles, by contrast, is the confusion, pain, bitterness and loss that so frequently accompany boundary crossings. Even as a 10-year-old, he pushed himself to the difficult choice "to dream." But as his book chronicles so much of the full context for that choice, we cannot escape a different dream reached in his final pages: "the hope that no child will have to experience what I did."

-- Wayne Hall, UC vice provost for faculty development

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Links:
More articles and videos about UC President Gregory Williams
Get your own copy "Life on the Color Line" from Amazon
President Williams' UC bio