Orphaned at age four, she was sent from Baltimore to segregated Durham, North Carolina, to live with her unflappable Aunt Pauline, who, while strict, was liberal-minded in accepting the tomboy Pauli as “my little boy-girl.” In fact, throughout her life, Murray would struggle with feelings of sexual “in-betweenness”-she tried unsuccessfully to get her doctors to give her testosterone-that today we would recognize as a transgendered identity. In a voice that is energetic, wry, and direct, Murray tells of a childhood dramatically altered by the sudden loss of her spirited, hard-working parents. At last, with the republication of this “beautifully crafted” memoir, Song in a Weary Throat takes its rightful place among the great civil rights autobiographies of the twentieth century. Yet Murray’s name and extraordinary influence receded from view in the intervening years now they are once again entering the public discourse. Kennedy Book Award and the Lillian Smith Book Award among other distinctions. THE STORY BEHIND THE DOCUMENTARY MY NAME IS PAULI MURRAYĪ prophetic memoir by the activist who “articulated the intellectual foundations” ( The New Yorker) of the civil rights and women’s rights movements.įirst published posthumously in 1987, Pauli Murray’s Song in a Weary Throat was critically lauded, winning the Robert F.
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