The neighborhood in Bessemer, Alabama, near the U. S. Foundry and Pipe factory is called Pipe Shop. Deborarh McDowell grew up there, an African-American woman in the segregated South, but left, and now directs the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies at the University of Virginia where she is the Alice Griffin Professor of English. This is her story and the story of her kin, three generations. "Engrossing. . . . The author has a seductive way with words that makes Leaving Pipe Shop as good as a piece of sweet potato pie served after a plate of greens and fried chicken." -- Boston Globe. "Told in the illuminating language of memory, "Leaving Pipe Shop" is a stunning personal portrait of the author's upbringing in the pre-civil-rights South....With passion, eloquence, and humor, "Leaving Pipe Shop" transcends the confines of the written page, leaving us with a sense not only of a time, a place, and a culture that has passed, but moreover with a sense of the haunting yet rejuvenating power of what it means to go home." -- Richmond, Virginia Voice.
New York: W. W. Norton, a 1998 first paperback edition of a 1996 hardback. Trade paperback.