A Life in the Sunshine
A Life in the Sunshine is the sprawling memoir of a Vietnam veteran who experienced segregation and achieved great personal success.
J. Everett Prewitt confronts twentieth-century historical milestones in the memoir A Life in the Sunshine, expanding on his Black American ancestral history as part of the Great Migration, childhood racism, school integration, and the lifelong lessons he gained from being drafted into the Vietnam War.
Prewitt grew up in mid-century Cleveland, Ohio, in a predominantly segregated Black neighborhood. He experienced systemic marginalization, and his oppressive social environment shaped the man he became. He learned to stave off bullies, utilized billiards at local pool halls as an additional source of income, navigated education and his multiathletic endeavors, and fine-tuned his leadership skills in the US Army while deployed in Vietnam. In time, he forged a career in real estate.
The memoir dissects life’s minutiae with the added complexities of being a Black American while growing up in the 1940s. The dynamics of environmental and educational racism are highlighted in separate-but-not-equal social habitats, showcasing the tight-knit community of Black families who lacked resources that white communities had access to.
Still, despite circling themes of overcoming the systematic influences of racial oppression, the memoir lacks focus. The Prewitt family tree lists each branch of relatives and what their offspring ventured into as adults, overwhelming Prewitt’s own story. This pattern continues in the book’s coverage of Prewitt’s friends, colleagues, associates, and acquaintances, until the list of people he knows becomes unwieldy and individual personalities are lost. Detailed information is provided regarding most people, though some are mentioned only to disappear from the book entirely afterward.
Further, the book’s emphasis on details does not extend to Prewitt’s own life; though it states that he was married twice, the story behind his relationship with his first wife is kept vague, and his second wife has no real presence in the text. Elsewhere, Prewitt attributes his prediabetes prognosis to exposure to Agent Orange while in Vietnam but does not explain the link between the two.
Conversely, the book does cover brief encounters from across Prewitt’s life, though the accompanying anecdotes aren’t made to serve a larger purpose in his story. And the book’s tone is conversational but too casual, almost stream of consciousness in style, while the text is inconsistent with spellings of names, punctuation use, and the signifying of proper nouns, leading to distractions.
An expansive memoir, A Life in the Sunshine covers a period from segregation into the present, celebrating personal successes in the face of social barriers.
Reviewed by
Brooke Leigh Howard
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
