MULTICOLORED MEMORIES OF A BLACK SOUTHERN GIRL

"We piece together a life of meeting people, going places, collecting stories," says Oliver, a journalist and writer in residence at Florida Atlantic University, but the pieces don't quite gel in this lifeless account of one of the first African-American freshmen to integrate the University of Florida in 1965. Her experiences intrigue (her father was fired from his job at a local restaurant after she participated in a civil rights demonstration, and she adopted a biracial child), but her book is pedestrian. Part autobiography (marred by an overabundance of "I," even for this genre), part account of a generation (dulled by an arguably editorial "we") and part meandering memoir, it leaves the reader with a confusing mélange of personal history and impersonal generalities. Autobiographical detail is lacking—e.g., her husband and children receive short shrift—and authority is scant for broad observations about her generation. Stories that might pass muster at family gatherings (getting lost in a store, one's first cup of cappuccino) wilt between book covers. The memoir reads like discreet essays that simply fail to cohere, and the chronology is equally disordered. Such work is sometimes redeemed by elegance and grace, but no such luck here: the style is flavorless. (Oct.)

Forecast:This is far from Anne Moody's Coming of Age and Lorene Cary's Black Ice. Women's studies groups will pick it up, and black readers who came of age in the '60s may identify, but nothing else will push sales much.