"Trudier Harris will tell you that African Americans who consider themselves southern are about as rare as summer snow. But Harris has always embraced the South, and in Summer Snow, her collection of poignant autobiographical essays, Harris explores her experiences as a black southerner and how they have shaped her into the writer and intellectual she has become. ". "Harris grew up in the racist environment of Tuscaloosa, Alabama in the 1950s and 60s. A member of a black southern family whose father was born in 1885 and whose mother died in 2001, she claims three centuries of blackness and southernness as pivotal forces in her life. Not surprisingly her most important influence was her mother. The book opens with a charming essay about how her mother chose the name Trudier, not Trudy, as her daughter's first name. Additionally, Harris includes a funny piece about her mother's use of "cotton-pickin' authority," an entertaining tribute to her mother's lifelong love of fishing, and a touching story of her mother's final heroic years in a nursing home. ". "Harris's family, church, and community served as antidotes to the white racism that surrounded her. Whether writing about the family front porch, where storytelling prevailed, or the church choir, where black voices could sing as loudly as they liked, Harris depicts sites where black life thrived and prospered. Within her black community, though, colorphobia did affect her high school experiences, and sexual harassment by black professors followed her to the black college she attended. ". "Summer Snow is filled with wonderful stories and wry wit. But it also contains a number of toughminded essays - one, about the price blacks have paid for desegregation, and another on the "staying power of racism. " In still another moving piece, Harris remembers a white teenager who propositioned her for sex when she was twelve years old, in exchange for five dollars. "--BOOK JACKET.