From the Publisher
How Madison ultimately connects with her grandfather’s descendants in China will produce more OMG moments than any prime-time drama on cable or Netflix could ever hope to elicit.” — Essence
“A well-structured memoir told in brief, punchy vignettes alternating between past and present.” — Kirkus Reviews
Finding Samuel Lowe is simply the most exciting, daring and brilliant memoir I’ve read in the 21st century.” — Kiese Laymon
“Told through an intimate family portrait this story is a moving account of a vivid historic migration; an unyielding and dogged journey of the human spirit.” — Walter Mosley
“This is an extraordinary story of identities lost and found. Paula Madison’s audacious search illuminates not only her own family’s story, but a lost world of the Chinese diaspora in the Caribbean, Jamaica’s mixing bowl of race and culture, and Harlem’s melting pot of talent and ambition.” — Ben Jealous, Former President and CEO, NAACP
“From one corner of the world to another, from one culture to another, Madison expertly brings family together, showing that all of humanity is attached by a thread of love. This emotionally rich story is a must-read, to be sure.” — Harriette Cole, author of Jumping the Broom
“A fascinating family memoir that peeks inside the life of a 1960s Harlem kid, takes readers back a century to Jamaica, and then reads like a detective story... Madison writes with such passion that it’s a treat to see how finding her grandfather means finding herself.” — The Bookworm Sez
“This memoir is a quick, fascinating read that sheds light on a little-known aspect of cross-cultural history.” — Bustle
Harriette Cole
From one corner of the world to another, from one culture to another, Madison expertly brings family together, showing that all of humanity is attached by a thread of love. This emotionally rich story is a must-read, to be sure.
The Bookworm Sez
A fascinating family memoir that peeks inside the life of a 1960s Harlem kid, takes readers back a century to Jamaica, and then reads like a detective story... Madison writes with such passion that it’s a treat to see how finding her grandfather means finding herself.
Kiese Laymon
Finding Samuel Lowe is simply the most exciting, daring and brilliant memoir I’ve read in the 21st century.
Essence
How Madison ultimately connects with her grandfather’s descendants in China will produce more OMG moments than any prime-time drama on cable or Netflix could ever hope to elicit.
Ben Jealous
This is an extraordinary story of identities lost and found. Paula Madison’s audacious search illuminates not only her own family’s story, but a lost world of the Chinese diaspora in the Caribbean, Jamaica’s mixing bowl of race and culture, and Harlem’s melting pot of talent and ambition.
Walter Mosley
Told through an intimate family portrait this story is a moving account of a vivid historic migration; an unyielding and dogged journey of the human spirit.
Bustle
This memoir is a quick, fascinating read that sheds light on a little-known aspect of cross-cultural history.
Essence
How Madison ultimately connects with her grandfather’s descendants in China will produce more OMG moments than any prime-time drama on cable or Netflix could ever hope to elicit.
From the Publisher - AUDIO COMMENTARY
"A well-structured memoir told in brief, punchy vignettes alternating between past and present." —Kirkus
Kirkus Review
2015-01-15
A spirited pursuit of her mother's roots takes one African-American woman from Jamaica to Harlem to China.A former NBC executive who is now CEO of a family investment group based in Chicago, Madison (who lives in Los Angeles) proves a formidable, dogged detective in tracing the complicated ramifications of her Chinese grandfather's work in Jamaica and return to China in the early 1930s. A teenager when he arrived in Jamaica in 1905, Samuel Lowe came from the Hakka minority ethnic group noted for its entrepreneurial drive; soon, he set up one thriving "Chiney shop" after another. He developed romantic attachments with the local ladies; in liaisons not unusual in Jamaica at the time, he fathered several children by different women. The first of these "outside children" was the author's mother, Nell Vera Lowe, whose distinctive Chinese look would cast her as a kind of pariah in her community. In time, Lowe married a family-designated Chinese bride sent from home, who bore him several more children. Thus, when Lowe returned with his wife to China during the business-stifling Depression, he left Nell behind, among other children, who scarcely knew him or each other. Badly treated by her mother, who resented her Chinese looks, Nell eventually immigrated to New York and became a citizen, raising her children largely on her own when her Jamaican husband proved troublesome and unfaithful. Madison traces this tale of loss through her mother's story: Without education, Nell was doomed to a hard life of work as a seamstress, and she endured welfare and marginalization with a ferocious protectiveness toward her children. As the author pursues Lowe's family in China, arranging visits and sifting through minute ancestral details, she proves a valiant avenger of her mother's difficult past. A well-structured memoir told in brief, punchy vignettes alternating between past and present.
