Reviewed by Dr. Tameka Bradley Hobbs
Stacey Patton is one of the most engaging and powerful African-American voices to rise from the contemporary literary scene in recent years. Her autobiography That Mean Old Yesterday, is part memoir, part history lesson, and part social commentary that is guaranteed to keep your eyes sliding, your mind burning, and your heart exploding with anger and hope.
That Mean Old Yesterday is reminiscent of Finding Fish, more famously known in its theatric format as “Antwone Fisher.” Like Fisher, Patton was given up by her mother as an infant and was raised by foster parents. At the age of five, she is taken to live with a new couple, known only to the reader as Myrtle and George, who change the course of her young life for the worse. Myrtle subjects young Stacey to seemingly daily rampages of verbal, physical, and sexual abuse, all while her passive adoptive father stands idly by as a tangential and silent witness to her torture. Patton’s story is a first-hand account of the travesty of neglect and abuse that the youngest members of our community endure as victims of situations that they do not create. And as children, they are unable to change their circumstances without the intervention of another concerned adult. These advocates proved to be far apart and few between in Patton’s life, as her contact with law enforcement officers and social workers indicate. At its core, That Mean Old Yesterday illustrates in vivid and heart-wrenching detail the challenges faced by this country’s foster care system, which is currently monitoring more than a half million children.
Patton has issued a survivor narrative in the tradition of Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, which appeared in the 1860s and documents that black woman’s ordeals of bondage, sexual exploitation, motherhood, and survival in the midst of oppression. Jacobs’ first-person narrative was intended to draw attention to the horrors of chattel slavery. Similarly, That Mean Old Yesterday is filled with heart-wrenching imagery that ought to move a community to rally to the defense of its most vulnerable and defenseless members.
Like Jacobs’ Incidents, Patton’s work is, without a doubt, a memoir on a mission. Through the prism of her own experiences and family history, she adroitly illustrates the vortex created at the dangerous intersection of slavery, folkways, and the contemporary decline of African-American communities and families. By documenting this cycle of tradition, borrowing heavily from Joy DeGruy Leary’s ideas on post-traumatic slavery disorder, Patton offers a scathing critique of African-American child-rearing practices which tolerate, and even sanction, abusive levels of punishment and disrespect toward the community’s youngest members. These are stories we know: the “seen-and-not-heard” policies that dominated many of our homes; the legends of switches, extension cords, and other household items that have filled many post-dinner fat-chewing sessions and episodes of BET’s “Comic View,” which highlight the whippings we endured as children that once made us cry, but now make us laugh. Firm discipline has been and is, for the most part, an accepted cultural norm in the African-American community. Patton eloquently and systematically links this tradition to its cultural roots in slavery, noting the devastating impact of that institution and its lingering effects on African-American families. As her memoir illustrates, it was these cultural norms that allowed many of the adults in her community and extended members of her adoptive family to witness Patton’s abuse but not interfere.
While a moving story, Yesterday suffers from some minor missteps that may be attributed to a freshman effort. Patton’s historical contextualization, while rich, sometimes delves into hyperbole. At times the writing is uneven; some annoying repetitiveness mixed in among fluid passages rich with imagery and emotion should have been addressed during the editing process.
Patton’s track record, with numerous William Randolph Hearst Awards for journalism, a degree from New York University under her belt, and her pursuit of African-American studies at Rutgers University, holds the promise of much more thoughtful works to prod and stimulate her budding audience. That Mean Old Yesterday is nearly equally inspiring and horrifying, with the balanced being tipped towards the former only because the reader is holding the evidence of the spiritual and intellectual triumph of the young heroine.