In her thoughtful, vivid debut memoir, Up Home, college president and scholar Ruth J. Simmons chronicles her childhood and her efforts to rise above her family's circumstances. She was the youngest of 12 children in a sprawling but fiercely loyal family and spent her early years in rural East Texas before moving to Houston. Simmons, born in 1945, grew up in a rapidly changing world, and her narrative charts her growing awareness of the world beyond the limits of Houston's impoverished Fifth Ward.
Simmons draws sharp portraits of the adults who shaped her: her quiet, hardworking mother; her volatile father who adored his baby girl; "Mamemma," her fiercely independent maternal grandmother; and her much older siblings. She credits her schoolteachers, beginning with her first teacher, Miss Ida Mae, with opening up her world. "Everything seemed possible with Miss Ida Mae," Simmons writes. She carried that sense of expansiveness through her elementary and secondary years, though her mother's death in 1961 was a terrible blow. Simmons, aided by caring teachers who helped her apply for scholarships, attended Dillard University in New Orleans, later spending time as an exchange student at Wellesley College and abroad. During her subsequent career in education, including her time as president of three different institutions--Smith College, Brown University, and Prairie View A&M University--Simmons has looked for ways to help students who may struggle in the college environment. Up Home is an insightful, straightforward portrait of the people and places that shaped the woman she has become. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams