Rita Williams

Rita Mae Williams was the youngest child of a sweet, pretty woman of Cherokee and African heritage, and a light-skinned ambitious black man who together ran a sort of dude ranch near Steamboat Springs, Colorado, leading hunting and fishing expeditions, and raising strawberries and raspberries, all with the help of Aunt Daisy, one of the state's first licensed female hunting guides. For a time, they "had the world by the tail on a downhill pull". But when Rita was 2 years old, her father abandoned the family to live with a white woman. The family business fell on hard times, and after moving to Denver to find work, Rita's mother died in a boarding house fire. Rita and her sisters came under the care of their mother's sister Daisy, the widow of ex-slave, Buffalo soldier and rancher Robert Ball Anderson. Daisy had married Mr. Anderson in 1922 when she was 21 and he was 79; his death left her with a lot of land in South Dakota, and not much else, so she had moved to Colorado to help out with her sister and brother-in-law's enterprise. From the age of 4 until she went off to college, Rita lived under the watchful eye of Aunt Daisy; finances were very tight, and Daisy made ends meet by cleaning houses, schools and businesses, often pressing Rita into service as her assistant. Daisy was tough, resourceful, and determined that Rita would "make something of herself", although her encouragement took strange forms, and often when Rita would show aptitude or talent in a certain area, Aunt Daisy would start throwing stumbling blocks in her path. She provided for education, music lessons, dance instruction and more, but she was impatient, hard to please, impossible to love, and sometimes downright cruel. For much of Rita's childhood and adolescence, she was the only African-American student in her classes, and she rarely met anyone other than white people. Her aunt's attitude toward her neighbors, employers and the nuns at the Catholic schools she sent Daisy to was inconsistent, a mixture of respect and contempt that often left Rita confused about just what her aunt--and the world--expected of her. This is a fascinating story, told without nostalgia or self-pity. Its only failing, in my opinion, is that it leaves us with so little information about the adult Rita became. I wish she had written a follow-up memoir (this one was published in 2006). This book definitely needs more exposure. See if you can find a copy--it's unlike anything else I've ever read.… (meer)