Sarah Bracey White

Three by Five welcomes Sarah Bracey White to its pages in July

Sarah Bracey White was born in Sumter, SC. She is a librarian, teacher and motivational speaker. As a long-time arts consultant to the Town of Greenburgh, she designed and manages a creative writing program for children, edits an annual edition of their short stories and sponsors an annual poetry contest. The author of a collection of poetry, Feelings Brought to Surface, her creative essays are included in the anthologies Children of the Dream; Dreaming in Color, Living in Black and White; Aunties: 35 Writers Celebrate Their Other Mother; Gardening On A Deeper Level and Heartscapes. Her essays have been published in many regional newspapers and on the internet. Her memoir, Primary Lessons, is scheduled for publication by CavanKerry Press in September, 2013. She lives with her husband in Westchester County, NY.

Primary Lessons: Sarah, a precocious five year old, is ripped from a middle-class life with surrogate parents in Philly and transplanted to a troubled, single-parent household in the Jim Crow south. Feeling alienated, she bristles at the poverty and unfairness, and refuses to accept the cultural system of segregation that tries to confine her — a system that her mother accepts as the southern way of life.

This coming-of-age memoir follows Sarah from Philadelphia to South Carolina – with its Colored water fountains – to the White Mountains of Vermont – where racism masquerades as classism – and finally to Baltimore, just as the 1963 March on Washington unfolds.  Sarah’s refusal to accept the cultural system that tries to confine her parallels the unrest of a nation seeking to re-define equality.  The author’s fiery spirit and unyielding sense-of-self sustain her through family, social and cultural upheavals. It also puts her at the forefront of the change that Martin Luther King dreamed about.

Join Three by Five on the 3rd, 13th, 23rd, and 30th to find out more about this author.