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Old House and Red Neckties: A Memoir of Race, Resilience, and Selfhood

by Grace Virtue
Old House and Red Neckties: A Memoir of Race, Resilience, and Selfhood

In Old House and Red Neckties, Grace Virtue weaves a powerful narrative, juxtaposing ideas of home and belonging against stark intergenerational poverty and systemic inequities—legacies of slavery and colonialism in her homeland, Jamaica. Migration to the United States, a coveted option for many, presents transformative opportunities, intertwined with displacement, disjuncture, and oppression—symbolized by a red necktie.

 

Armed with the finest values of her village, Old House, Grace takes the reader on a journey through deeply complex spaces as she engages the world in unexpected ways.

Thought-provoking and inspirational, Old House and Red Neckties is about authenticity, resilience, and the unyielding spirit of one individual determined to live in dignity and freedom. It is also a clarion call to rethink our perceptions of poverty and oppression and work toward a more just world.

Pages: 258
Pub Date: 07-25-2024
Softcover: 18.95 979-8-88824-385-5
Hardcover: 25.95 979-8-88824-387-9

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The reviews are in…

  • “A timely work that addresses the ways the construction of race goes beyond the Black–White dichotomies, particularly in the United States. It expands the BLM imperative to encounter the different ways race signifies in other parts of the diaspora and in that sense is as salutary a nuance for the African American as it is for the White American discourse. In both discourses, we often face the problem of flattening, or worlding, that treats all Black contexts as one or the US situation as the one. This perspective from someone who has navigated both the Jamaican/Caribbean and US contexts is very helpful. . . . Lyrical and poetic at times, and always riveting in its descriptions of Jamaica’s natural beauty and its complex social environment.”


    —Curdella Forbes, PhD, Author, Professor of Caribbean Literature, Howard University

  • “This book took me down so many roads! Sometimes in dialogue with her, sometimes admiring her journey, and sometimes just arguing with her! Surely this is the sign of a good read? A modern-day Jamaican DeTocqueville, Grace critiques political and civil society and helps us see them in revealing new ways. On a dissenting note, I disagree with her characterization of both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Her values are better than theirs.”


    —Matthew Creelman, Journalist, Guatemala

  • “Dr. Virtue’s story is poignant, heartbreaking, complicated, infuriating, and fascinating. She uses a deceptively casual approach to make searing observations about the pervasive nature of systemic oppression, the risks of confronting it, and what is lost to society when huge swathes of people are trapped within destructive systems. This book is enlightening, poetically engaging, and deeply relevant to today’s America, and for our world.”


    —Kirandeep Singh Sirah, Storyteller, TEDx Speaker, Johnson City, Tennessee

Grace Virtue is a keen scholar of the humanities and social justice advocate from Silver Spring, Maryland, and Manchester, Jamaica. She earned her doctorate and master’s degree from Howard University and her bachelor’s in journalism and social science from the University of the West Indies, Mona. Across disciplines and professional endeavors, the thread that binds her work and aspirations is the quest for dignity and justice for marginalized peoples.

All books by this author