The World According to Fannie Davis, Bridgett M. Davis
The World According to Fannie Davis, Bridgett M. Davis
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The World According to Fannie Davis
My Mother's Life in the Detroit Numbers

Author: Bridgett M. Davis

Narrator: Bridgett M. Davis

Unabridged: 10 hr 14 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/29/2019

Synopsis

As seen on the Today Show: This true story of an unforgettable mother, her devoted daughter, and their life in the Detroit numbers of the 1960s and 1970s highlights "the outstanding humanity of black America" (James McBride).
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 home. That woman was Fannie Davis, Bridgett M. Davis's mother.
Part bookie, part banker, mother, wife, and granddaughter of slaves, Fannie ran her numbers business for thirty-four 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" and provide a prosperous life for her family -- and how those sacrifices resonate over time.

About Bridgett M. Davis

Bridgett M. Davis is the author of the memoir, The World According To Fannie Davis: My Mother’s Life In The Detroit Numbers, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, named a Best Book of 2019 by Kirkus Reviews, and featured as a clue on Jeopardy! She is author of two novels, Into the Go-Slow, and Shifting Through Neutral. Davis is also writer/director of the award-winning film Naked Acts, which was recently re-released to critical acclaim. She is Professor Emerita at Baruch College (CUNY) and the Graduate Center, where she taught creative, narrative and film writing. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the LA Times, among other publications. A graduate of Spelman College and Columbia Journalism School, she lives in Brooklyn with her family.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Biblio

What a surprise this book was. It's about the author's mother, who ran a numbers game in Detroit from the 1960s through the 1980s. She did very well and was able to give her family a good middle class life. But it came at a cost -- the family had to keep the secret, since numbers games were illegal......more

Quotes

New York Times Editor's ChoiceBuzzfeed Best Book of the YearParade Best Book of 2019Kirkus Best Memoirs of the YearCode Switch Book Club pickWell-Read Black Girl Book Club PickA Buzzfeed Book Club PickNBC's Best African-American Memoirs That Belong On Your Bookshelf

"The World According to Fannie Davis is a daughter's gesture of loving defiance, an act of reclamation, an absorbing portrait of her mother in full. Blending memoir and social history, [Davis] recounts her mother's extraordinary story alongside the larger context of Motor City's rise and fall."—Jennifer Szalai, New York Times

"Davis's heartwarming memoir honors her remarkable mother, who made a good life for her family in the '60s and '70s."—New York Times, Editor's Choice

"A rich and heartwarming memoir honors a remarkable mother....We need more stories like Fannie's-the triumph and good life of a lucky black woman in a deeply corrupt world."—New York Times Book Review

"The novelist and teacher illuminates the life of her iron-willed mother, who in the 1960s and '70s spearheaded
Detroit's shadow economy (through an illegal lottery known as "The Numbers") in order to bolster both her family and the city's burgeoning black middle class."—O, Oprah Magazine Reading Room

"The author candidly and poignantly transports readers to her formative years in Detroit, where her mother, Fannie, successfully ran numbers-- right from the family's dining room table-- with class, determination and dignity to spare."—Bridgette Bartlett Royall, Essence Magazine

"The book blends memoir with the compelling social history of the numbers, a lottery game that operated outside of the law but very much inside the context of African-American life and culture."—Kate Tuttle, The Boston Globe

"The story of Fannie Davis, as her daughter so thoroughly tells it, is the story of not just one woman, in one city, at one period in time; it is, in many ways, the story of black America, the resilience and solidarity of the marginalized."—Entertainment Weekly

"Novelist Bridgett M. Davis turned to nonfiction in what started out as the story of her mother...But this memoir turned out to be much more: a panorama of African-American communities in this era, the resolve they demonstrated and the restrictions put upon them in their pursuit of the American dream. It's a family story of nationwide scale."—David Canfield, Entertainment Weekly

"Bridgett M. Davis draws a loving portrait of her unforgettable mother who gamed the system and won. Davis is a witness to the journey of the African American strivers of Detroit, but she is also a witness to the evolution of her own remarkable family history. Combining rigorous research with an insider's access, The World According To Fannie Davis is a triumphant tale of female empowerment. Bridgett Davis' love letter to her mother lights a bold new path, because sometimes leaning in is not enough."—Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage

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