Limited Choices: Mable Jones, a Black Children's Nurse in a Northern White Household

Disclosure: I'm a college classmate of the younger of the two sister-authors (Ms. Nelson). We'd recently reconnected via Swarthmore's 55th Zoom reunions. so I was prepared to like her book, which she'd mentioned modestly (almost in passing) as a group of us late WW2 babies compared experiences about growing up. I expected a sweet admiring "thank you Mammy" memoir with a sprinkling of reflections on "nannies" and domestic help among the wealthy New York set in the 40s & 50s.No!! Much more."Limited Choices" IS personal & full of admiration. We learn that Mable was a capable, giving, resourceful human being. We learn about what privilege looked like for the parents of the authors and their siblings. One author grew up to be an historian, the other a sociologist, so no surprise that their book is "academic" (think footnotes and appendices), But it's a comfortable layperson read. It expands beyond the human Mable and the (numerous) White kids she raised, to examine a major but understudied sociological, historical phenomenon: the big-picture realities of "domestic worker" Blacks in the post-war period. IMHO "Limited Choices" nicely complements Isabel Wilkerson's "The Warmth of Other Suns" and "Caste," by zeroing in on the realities of poor Black women from the South who have to support themselves and their own children by raising those of more entitled northern White folks. The themes of JimCrow travel, shifting between household and race-worlds, North and South, poverty, compromises, all the social forces barely understood but setting all the rules of the game for all the players; these interplay with personal affection and intimacy. The book makes ones think deeply about the nature and sources of nurturing (mothering & grandmothering, what makes a family, where are the men). What's behind Mable's (and the authors') lifestyles, so varied by geography, religion, class & caste? Lurking always is the ever-present American reality: race.The authors found many of Mable's family, but the lovely comment-note above from a grandchild makes it clear that the positive ripples from this book are only beginning to spread. Read the book for all that it says, and all that it cannot say. (We all, especially the authors, wish we knew Mable's deepest thoughts.) You'll learn a lot of history (painlessly!). You will think about the folks who helped raise you, & who care for us when we need help. You'll think also about the country that limited choices for Mable in her lifetime and how/why choices remain limited now because of race, class, immigration status, education, gender.Thank you authors/sisters for introducing readers to Mable, opening her world not only to her own family and your college classmates, but to us all.

Loved reading about my grandma.