![]() Like One of the Family has been long overlooked, but this new edition, featuring a foreword by best-selling author Roxane Gay, will introduce Childress to a new generation. ![]() Although she was critically praised, Childress’s uncompromising politics and unflinching depictions of racism, classism, and sexism relegated her to the fringe of American literature. Upon publication the book sparked a critique of working conditions, laying the groundwork for the contemporary domestic worker movement. Yet, it was incumbent upon the maid to be responsive to and flattered by white assertions that she was like one of the family. Rippling with satire and humor, Mildred’s outspoken accounts vividly capture her white employers’ complacency and condescension-and their startled reactions to a maid who speaks her mind and refuses to exchange dignity for pay. ![]() ![]() Like One of the Family (1956, adapted from Childresss newspaper columns. The hilarious, uncompromising novel about African American domestic workers-from a trailblazer in Black women’s literature and now featuring a foreword by Roxane Gayįirst published in Paul Robeson’s newspaper, Freedom, and composed of a series of conversations between Mildred, a black domestic, and her friend Marge, Like One of the Family is a wry, incisive portrait of working women in Harlem in the 1950s. Born Alice Herndon in Charleston, S.C., Oct. ![]()
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