Unafraid of the dark

McNatt, Rosemary Bray.
Title	Unafraid of the dark : a memoir / Rosemary Bray.
Publication Info.	New York : Random House, 1998.

Amid the current heated debate on welfare reform, Bray offers a compassionate and, more important, informed and knowledgeable voice. As a child growing up in Chicago, Bray's family received welfare to supplement the father's erratic income, a situation that embittered an already troubled man and worsened a volatile marriage. She laments the culture of the welfare program, the misguided policies that have marginalized the role of fathers in too many low-income families, particularly black families. She speaks out in the face of welfare reform tinged by mean-spiritedness, aimed at punishing adults who make ill-advised decisions even if it means harming children as well. Bray's memoir is also a coming-of-age story of a black woman growing up in the 1960s and 1970s. She recalls stifling poverty that had her envying rich classmates enough to steal from them to replicate the easy leisure of buying snack food and cosmetics, even as the costlier luxuries of well-appointed homes remained beyond her reach. Bray's self-discovery continues through her college years: falling in love, questioning career goals, struggling for a political place in a turbulent period of growing race and feminist consciousness. Some years after college, a lucky break lands her at Essence magazine, where she finds the nurturing support needed even by a Yale-educated black woman. A voracious reader, Bray eventually lands the ultimate book-lover's job: an editor for the New York Times Book Review. Bray's is an eloquent voice, advocating on behalf of all the children and families that continue to need help to make the transition out of poverty. ((Reviewed January 1 & 15, 1998)) Copyright 2000 Booklist Reviews