Rabbit: The Autobiography of Ms. Pat
Patricia Williams (aka Ms. Pat) was born and raised in Atlanta at the height of the crack epidemic. One of five children, Pat watched as her mother struggled to get by on charity, cons, and petty crimes. At age seven, Pat was taught to roll drunks for money. At twelve, she was targeted for sex by a man eight years her senior. By thirteen, she was pregnant. By fifteen, Pat was a mother of two.
Alone at sixteen, Pat was determined to make a better life for her children. But with no job skills and an eighth-grade education, her options were limited. She learned quickly that hustling and humor were the only tools she had to survive. Rabbit is an unflinching memoir of cinematic scope and unexpected humor. With wisdom and humor, Pat gives us a rare glimpse of what it's really like to be a black mom in America.
Publisher
Dey Street Books
Publish Date
May 22, 2018
Type
Hardcover
Another Black Author
Patricia Williams, originally from Illinois, was, for 27 years, a professor of Design at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. Although always a vociferous reader, she did not begin writing poetry until early in 2013, after she retired from teaching. "I feel that art, design, music and the literary arts are natural partners-all creatively examine life and living. Poetry is a search for the universal in the personal. Some poems can be taken at face value, some have layers. Each of us reads a poem through our own life filter and each takes away a different understanding or experience." Williams' poems have been published in a variety of print and online journals and anthologies. The Port Side of Shadows, her first chapbook, reflects traveling not only in the physical sense, but in those "uncharted places" of the spirit and the imagination. She lives with her husband in rural central Wisconsin, where she is at work on a new chapbook about country living. Williams has three sons, daughters-in-law and grandchildren.