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My Mother's Life in the Detroit Numbers
by Bridgett M. Davis
Book Reviewed by:A singular memoir that tells the story of one unforgettable mother, her devoted daughter, and the life they lead in the Detroit numbers of the 1960s and 1970s.
In 1958, the very same year that an unknown songwriter named Berry Gordy borrowed $800 to found Motown Records, a pretty young mother from Nashville, Tennessee borrowed $100 from her brother to run a Numbers racket out of her tattered apartment on Delaware Street, in one of Detroit's worst sections. That woman was Fannie Davis, Bridgett M. Davis' mother. Part bookie, part banker, mother, wife, granddaughter of slaves, Fannie became more than a numbers runner: she was a kind of Ulysses, guiding both her husbands, five children and a grandson through the decimation of a once-proud city using her wit, style, guts, and even gun. She ran her numbers business for 34 years, doing what it took to survive in a legitimate business that just happened to be illegal. She created a loving, joyful home, sent her children to the best schools, bought them the best clothes, mothered them to the highest standard, and when the tragedy of urban life struck, soldiered on with her stated belief: "Dying is easy. Living takes guts."
A daughter's moving homage to an extraordinary parent, The World According to Fannie Davis is also the suspenseful, unforgettable story about the lengths to which a mother will go to "make a way out of no way" to provide a prosperous life for her family - and how those sacrifices resonate over time. This original, timely, and deeply relatable portrait of one American family is essential reading.
The World According to Fannie Davis speaks to broader social struggles related to class, race, gender and migrancy. This memoir captivates, balancing between the relatability of inter-generational family relationships—the admiration, tension, struggle and loss within them—and the magnetism of lucrative, risky black-market business...continued
Full Review
(830 words)
(Reviewed by Jamie Chornoby).
In The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother's Life in the Detroit Numbers, Bridgett M. Davis explains how property ownership was the key determinant in creating opportunity and prosperity across generations of her family. However, historically, there have been hefty barriers to property ownership for people of color in the United States, ranging from racially-motivated violence to discriminatory legislation. The year that Bridgett's grandfather—a working-class tradesman—bought his first piece of land, 26 racial massacres struck Tennessee, later known as the "Red Summer of 1919." Ray Winbush, the director of Fisk University's Race Relations Institute, explains this relationship in basic terms: "If you're looking for stolen ...
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[A] rare book that successfully combines vivid family memoir with timely social history...I loved this book.
