Growing Up in Mississippi is a vivid and descriptive biography that grips at the very core of every human emotion as memoirs of growing up in somewhat painfully poor social conditions in Mississippi do not deter the family, but bond them together with the unified strength and triumph most prevalent in top movies like Soul Food, or even to overcome travesties as in The Color Purple. You will be intrigued by the strong development of characters like the wayward Uncle Wigley, a cursed character among many black families who resorts to inflicting abuse on family members, and the relationship between Jay and Tish, a classic example of how women in the past wound up with larger unplanned families because love conquered all back then, even poverty. The reader feels as if they are in the story and watching without speaking. It is evidenced that life was slower paced, but more fulfilling even with the absence of television. This is a modern-day tale with a happy ending, and heralds the rise of our families of the past through political and social upheavals as prevalent as the Civil Rights Movement.