Project Girl

This rather unstructured memoir certainly contains high drama, but it doesn't quite succeed in illuminating the larger social issues--race, class, education, identity--to which it implicitly points. McDonald, the gifted child of an ""old-fashioned"" black family (hardworking father, tireless at-home mom) living in a Brooklyn housing project, was a ""nerd"" in the projects but an alienated ""project girl"" in the more privileged world to which her academic achievement earned her entry. She made it to Vassar in the early 1970s only to become a heroin user, but righted herself (especially during a junior year abroad in Paris) in time to enter law school. She was shattered again when she was raped, after which she expressed her rage by setting fires in her law school dorm. She returned to school and now practices law in her beloved Paris. However gripping and potentially instructive this mix of harrowing and inspirational facts are, the telling is awkward. While McDonald portrays her post-rape torment with graphic intensity, her self-analysis--especially of her heroin problem--are shallow. Her writing is fluid--so fluid that it's shame that she relies on so many previously written journal excerpts that chronicle not only her progress at work but also her mood swings, off-the-cuff remarks (""We may have a woman Vice-President!"") and ideological natterings unbuttressed by thoughtful argument (""America's corporate structure... is responsible for each and every individual moment of suffering""). Despite these flaws, readers will find in these pages a spirited challenge to the idea that upward mobility is easy or comes without a heavy psychological cost. (Jan.)