All Our Kin: Strategies for Survival in a Black Community

By looking at the cover.. you'd think this was the most boring book available at the bookstore. I dreaded reading this when it was assigned to my Anthropology course.. however when I finally got around to reading it is insightful and interesting. It brought up facts that I've seen around me but failed to recognize as part of a culture. One question I do pose though, when the family which inherits a large sum of money decides to share it among the poor community. Wouldn't the community be better off if that one family decided to move out of poverty, enabling the poor community to become smaller and thus have more items being able to rotate within the community? Eventually the community can become richer because of this instead of dragging those around them down.Interesting book..

This book was assigned reading for an introductory anthropology course, however, once I started reading the book, I simply was unable to put it down. This is one of the most enlightening books I have ever read, detailing every aspect of working poor African Americans in the 60's. Carol Stack immersed herself in this culture and was able to learn all aspects of their daily lives and convey to the reader a vivid and detailed portrait of truly difficult lives of a group of people that make up only 1% of African Americans in this country. As a white woman, this book was especially enlightening to truly understand a completely foreign culture. This should be required reading for all.