Elinor Dore of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, D.C. praised Mary Mills Barrow for her “agile writing ability.” She went on to say that 'Small Moments: A Child’s View of the Civil Rights Movement' was “American history told with care and intelligence.” Michala Tyann, author of 'Drowning in Words' said “Fans of Kathryn Stockett’s 2009 'The Help' will appreciate Barrow’s 'Small Moments' …… a valuable tool to commemorate the steps made to combat racism in the 1960s and to educate readers about the lasting effects of racism, classism, and sexism.”
'Small Moments' takes place in the early 1960’s at the beginning of the Civil Rights movement when ripples of the then unknown Tuskegee experiment may have reached well beyond the borders of Alabama with devastating affects in New Jersey and beyond. Could repercussions of this scientific horror really reach so far? Barrow creates the possibility as she draws on her own childhood spent with an uneducated, Southern, African-American care-giver, Amelia, who dies of syphilis five years after moving with her family from Tennessee to Trenton. In the story, Barrow describes how the main character, Amelia, uses her profound sense of right and wrong to reveal her past life while framing it with the lessons of the turbulent times. Barrow also describes how, as a child, she learned Amelia’s truths.
Mary Mills Barrow is receiving on-going praise for 'Small Moments'. The reviews on Amazon and Goodreads average 4 or 5 stars and the personal tributes are touching. This is consistent with reactions to other work by Barrow.
Having begun her career in the New York publishing world, Barrow worked as an editor and publicist before moving to Sydney, Australia as a communications consultant for an international management-consulting group. While working in Sydney, she studied Australian Literature at the University of Sydney and began writing her first novel, 'Crossing Back With Lily Anne' - the story of an autistic savant’s impact on two generations in both Australia and the US. Barrow then moved back to the US, began raising three children and wrote 'Lobster so Big He Had to be the Devil', which won an honorable mention in the 1993 National Novel Writing contest.
In 2000, using lessons learned in Australia, Barrow co-founded a sun protection clothing company and started a ‘not for profit organization, the SunAWARE International Foundation. She has since published several award winning books, including 'Sun Protection For Life ' (New Harbinger Publications, 2005) that are written for different age groups about skin cancer prevention.
Mary Mills Barrow now lives in Oak Ridge, Tennessee where she has begun working on the marketing of 'Small Moments'. As the response has been so overwhelmingly positive, she would like to find a traditional publisher for that book as well as her other manuscripts and spend more time writing.
“Barrow effectively chronicles the slow fade of youthful earnestness and the searing disappointment of childhood realization”
– Kirkus Reviews
BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
SMALL MOMENTS
BY Mary M. Barrow • POSTED ON Jan. 20, 2014
A debut coming-of-age memoir set during the civil rights era, as seen through the eyes of a young white girl.
The story elaborates on Barrow’s childhood memories of her family’s caretaker, Amelia, focusing on the family’s move from Chattanooga to New Jersey in 1959, just as racial tensions escalated and civil rights protests gained momentum. Amelia, a thick-set woman with support hose and Coke-bottle glasses whom the family calls “Mimi,” looked after Barrow and her five siblings as their parents lived entitled lives in suburbia. The memoir is largely told in a series of vignettes, and as racial violence plays out on the national stage, its implications are addressed in Barrow’s household. Each story is prefaced by a short description giving cultural context, ranging from the history of the slave-built walls on New England’s Block Island to the sit-ins at department stores across the South to the 1960 presidential election. However, the work’s most satisfying embellishments are the stretches of dialogue between Mimi and the two youngest children, Barrow and her brother Chuck. While Mimi irons, cooks and sews for the family, the youngest are always at her feet, and their conversations undulate with Southern rhythms as Mimi dispenses wise advice and homespun aphorisms. The loose episodic structure resembles the way that children form their worldviews, and Barrow shows how she began to piece together the depth of the racial divide, even in her own home, through overheard conversations and wallflower observations. These moments of reflection on social justice and adult morality thread through scenes of suburban childhood mischief. As Barrow grows, her understanding of Mimi’s strained relationship with her family takes on nuance and emotional depth. The author also shows a knack for the sensory details of afternoons whiled away at the beach or evenings exploring in the woods (“When my feet slid on the dry soil of the steep cliff ridges, I clutched the branches of small bayberry bushes”). Overall, Barrow effectively chronicles the slow fade of youthful earnestness and the searing disappointment of childhood realization.
An affecting tribute that distills larger social themes through a child’s perspective.
Publisher: Wise Ink Creative Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 6, 2014
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