Another Review at MyShelf.Com
Publisher: Warner Books
Release Date: January 2003
ISBN: 1586212001
Awards:
Format Reviewed: Audio Cassette - Abridged edition
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Read an Excerpt
Genre: Nonfiction / Memoir
Reviewer: Brenda Weeaks
Reviewer Notes: Hardcopy review

 

Growing Up King
An Intimate Memoir
By Dexter Scott King, Ralph Wiley (Contributor)

     How do YOU judge a man, by where he came from or where he's going?

     This is something Dexter Scott King seeks the answer to, especially with his parents' people. His father was civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr, and it's his people that years later did not want Dexter as leader of the King Center, one of their reasons being his lack of education. Dexter's feelings about it, however, were that they didn't need the family of the man that had brought the King Center to the height at which it now stands, and that those against Dexter's leadership wanted to take control of the memorial and remove his mother, as well as him.

      Here stood a man who had survived a past of lost loved ones. A man whose childhood endured pain and suffering from those he didn't even know. A childhood made strong by a father and mother who loved, taught, and protected their children. After his father's death, Dexter became a young man in need. He needed to find out who he was and why he wasn't as much like his father as he wished. His answers lead to undiagnosed health reasons and hidden emotions.

     King begins his memoir by telling readers about his childhood with his father and mother up to and after his father's death. It is a sensitive, poignant account. Readers will give way to emotions as the past is relived and a great man's assassination is retold. Dexter also talks about the famous people in his father's life who supported the civil right cause. Many of those continue to support civil rights and black education today.

     Dexter then goes into his life and schooling, after his father is killed. As a man, he discovers why he failed to gain the knowledge in school that his mother so wanted for him. He shares with readers his different jobs and his love of music, and how he became the leader of King Center, only to resign later in disappointment and heartache.

      Dexter Scott King reads the audio version of his intimate memoir. Although his voice is a bit stilted, his words are nonetheless touching.

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