Chapters from Mama's Life

How many people can actually experienced the early lives of their mothers? How many people can understand the hopes, ambitions and fears of their mothers who were born a quarter of a century before they were born? How many people actually appreciate their mothers' relationships with their parents and siblings? How many people really know how their parents met and decided to marry? Of course, I was not present during my mother's childhood and young adulthood in East Texas between 1915 and 1935. However, I was privileged to vicariously live through those days of her life and be a part of her sorrows, pains, disappointments and happiness because of the stories that she told to my siblings and me. The writing of this book, Chapters from Mama's Life, has truly been a labor of love. As I wrote each sentence, each paragraph and each chapter, I laughed, cried and rejoiced with my mother and her family. Writing her story has been a heartwarming experience for me which I am sharing with my siblings, cousins and readers. It is a story worth telling because it is not just the story of the Spencer Household, it is a story of a Black Southern rural family whose lives touch the very fabric of what it meant to grow up and come of age in the United States of America during that era of our country's history.