Ticket to Exile

Ticket to Exile The book, Ticket to Exile is a rare intimate portrait of an intelligent mind trapped in an ignorant world. As I read this book I found it to be thought provoking and inspiring. As a person of color, I kept comparing my life to Mr. Miller's childhood. I was amazed by how resilient and resourceful my elders were in stark contrast to how easy my life is today. Ticket to Exile opened my eyes to the subtle and damaging aspects of internal and institutional racism as it was at that time and it made me reflect on how it continues today. If this book doesn't change your mind I hope that it changes your heart. As it has mine. Ticket to Exile is an affirmation of life. Thank you Mr. Miller! I highly recommend this book for all readers, book clubs and especially High School students.

Adam David Miller's new memoir is a startling look back at a valuable life that was nearly extinguished by ignorance and fear. The book is a multi-faceted look at the human condition and how we treat one another in a world that would often have us consider one another the enemy. The fact is that Mr. Miller does himself great credit by not hammering on the idea that only white people were dangerous to existence, and emphasizing that race is not the only issue, but difference of any sort. This, despite the central fact that his tale is one of fear and oppression by white people. This lack of hyperbole gives credence to the basis for his story. Here is the tale of a man almost lynched by a mob of white men during the early 40's in the Jim Crow South, a tale that takes the time and care to cover all the ways in which human beings demean and punish one another for their individuality. In doing this, Mr. Miller makes it quite clear that there are good folks and bad folks, although he does not use that nomenclature, but that the hierarchy of oppression from white to black is only one sort of bigotry, and that horror begins with fear of difference. The central and underlying concept of the book impresses anyone who picks this volume up with its certain knowledge of what centuries of oppression does to those oppressed: to turn those of white skin against those whose blood contains so little as "one drop" of African-American blood, those of lighter color against those who have darker skin, male and female against one another, those with education and social standing against their less well-educated, well-heeled neighbors, those from one side of a town against those from the less-desirable address, and homophobes of whatever sexual orientation who fear they might become tainted by what a person does in the privacy of his or her own body against love, and those with the desire for love, however that might be defined. This moving book is the story of a town in the Jim Crow South, but it is also the story of anytown anywhere in the United States of its time - and of anytown anywhere today (despite the current emphasis on politically correct phraseology practiced in public). It is also the story of a boy turned man in one second by circumstances beyond his control, and beyond his ken at the moment he is betrayed. Mr. Miller's young life is held forfeit in the hands of a group of men who know him and his family and yet consider killing him because of his skin color. In addition, it is the story of all of us at that age (19) - bored with our hometown, looking for some new and interesting person/thing/idea, we leave the local setting and set out on our journey to human independence. The difference here is that Mr. Miller is thrown from one sort of exile into another, as much against his journey as his ancestors were against theirs. For most of us growing up with a wish for independence, we find ourselves in new territory, but Mr. Miller finds himself

What an immensely readable treasure. I smiled, I cried, I was provoked, riled against the injustices, 'bled' from the scab of hurt living with this history in my lap. I was kept on the edge of my seat for two nights even though the book is structured with the 'ending' first--what an accomplishment just on that note alone. I'm deliciously confused how the author kept the suspense and incredible tension going in flashback. So all this to say, I'm waiting for the 'next installment...' (a memoir covering the next period of years?)

As a current college student, I found Adam David Miller's acute memoirs an important document for upcoming generations not only to gain an un-bias perspective of the segregated south but also to disscuss and explore the issues of race, gender, class and sexual issues Miller has observed. The parallel of issues to mine and other generations simply causes one to confront the issues we all face for simply being human.

Ticket to Exile is a memoir that offers readers a rare look under the masks of race, class, sexual orientation and gender in America. Though it takes place in small town South Carolina in the 1920's and 30's, it's relevancy to today can not be under-estimated. As the story unfolds, it reveals how all of us, regardless of race, class and gender are forced to live our lives in boxes that distort who we are and keep us separated one from the other. Adam David Miller is a keen observer of human lives. Without hyperbole, abstraction or stereotype, he describes the people and relationships he observed in his hometown of Orangeburg. Readers experience an account of real characters shown with love with all their glorious humanity, flaws and contradictions. Above all, this book is written from a place of love of humanity and a desire to liberate the human spirit from the boxes of racism, sexism, homophobia and classism. However, none of those abstractions appear in the book. Instead we see and feel how incidious stereotypes have shaved away and sterilized some of the most precious parts of being creative, fully-expressive human beings. We see the cost of our fears of difference and end up with a great desire to unmask ourselves and the people we encounter, to redeem what has been stolen from us as a human race, our diversity and our love of one another. Young and old, rich and poor, male and female, gay and straight, black, white and everything else, read this book. You will never again see the world in quite the same way and you will be glad of it.