It wasn’t the wrong side of the tracks in this small town, it was the black side of the tracks, it was designated as black housing. Mostly 1 room shacks, her family was the only white family on that side of the tracks. Their house was given to them by the city. It was a 12x15 box with no bathroom, running water or electricity. Water was at the curb. 7 girls plus the mother lived in this box.
The story is more about how social fears drove her to drinking, her background growing up is basicaly just a quailfier. White men were almost expected to be inappropriate with the girls. Black men were always respectful of them. White girls were expected to ridicule them for their clothing the other black children simply accepted them. She was basicaly afraid of white people even though she no longer had a reason to be.
I recommend taking the title from a pithy line from the memoir itself.
Like even sven says, an evocatively cryptic or mysterious phrase can serve as an intriguing title; expecting to learn the meaning when you read her story.
This is actually my ex wife who I have maintained a close friendship with since our divorce 25 years ago. The chances of the book actually being published and making it to book shelves is very close to zero. She wants to hand it out to girls she helps in AA.
Her perspective is entirely different than mine. ( thats why we divorced). She never really recognized any significance to her growing up with poor rural blacks, I don't believe she saw them as black as much as just other poor people she grew up with. When she left Mississippi and came to California she went to work in a factory. All of her new friends were black girls she worked with even though I doubt more than 10% of the girls who worked in the factory were black.
I met her in one of the local motown clubs which were popular in the Los Angeles area in the 60's. We had some great times, we threw a lot of parties. Most of my friends were white and 90% of her friends were black and we made some great memories that are usually the first topic to come up whenever we get together with old friends from that era.
I knew she was shy around middle class or affluent whites but never realized the extent of it until I started my business. This is where the story of her alcoholism really starts. She just couldn't function around middle class whites unless she was drinking, the more she drank the braver she got. Within 10 years she was a full blown alcoholic.
Her thoughts were about 10% of the book on backbround, 10% on her drinking days and 80% on recovery. My suggestion was about 30% on background, 20% on the drinking days and 50% on recovery. I have always felt she had a great story, our best hope would be that if it came out decent someone would pick it up and rewrite it.
In the 40’s and 50’s and well into the 60’s Mississippi was still heavily segregated. There was a white and a black side to everything. The whites lived on the westside of the tracks and the blacks lived on the east side. There were some white owned farms on the east side but they didn’t count as they were not living in the rows of shacks. I doubt the entire town had much over a 1,000 people. About 70% white.
But she does have a chance of getting it published. In my writing group we had a lady who was writing her memoirs; it was published by BookPartners, Inc. in Wilsonville, Oregon. If you’re interested in giving it a look it’s And The Coyotes Howled by I. Riley Helmstetter. I liked her working title, By Shanks and Shankspony, but the publisher felt most people wouldn’t understand that. It means…by farm horse or mule(?) or walking.
Becky, I will look that up. I need to do some reading on these types of stories so I will have a better shot at writing it. I will actually do the writing for her. Neither of us are writers. I have published a couple of things in the past so I am able to struggle through it but I am sure it would need to be re written to have any kind of real quality.
I agree that it isn’t offensive but something in the title just doesn’t click with me. Even “BOTH sides of the tracks” seems marginally more interesting.
If she does shop it around to publishers, and someone picks it up, the publisher will title it. I have a friend in publishing, who says trends come and go-- some years the one-word title is in, some years, the pun, some years, the mysterious title that doesn’t really describe the book, some years, mentioning the name of one of the main characters in the title is the trend. It’s true if you go back and look at old lists of bestsellers. The trends in titles are obvious even if we don’t notice them when we’re in the midst of them.
But anyway, you might look and see what kind of titles are trendy now-- trends are trends for a reason. They hook people at the time. If the author wants people to open the book, she needs a title that appeals to current tastes.
But I did like the suggestion “I grew up there too.” My only reservation is that if the audience is mainly black, they might see is as another white person with a lecture for them. The title sounds like it is mainly meant to appeal to a white audience.
I think her target audience would be women who were born into poverty and dysfunctional and alcoholic homes where physical and sexual abuse were the norm. She has worked with a lot of black women over the years I think simply because she gets along with them so well but I don't think they would be the targeted reader. She gets along pretty well with most anyone who grew up in poverty.