Redlined: A Memoir of Race, Change, and Fractured Community in 1960s Chicago

(Paperback)

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With publication slated for the 50thanniversary of ML Kings assassination, the book will be published at the optimum time to talk about King and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, the era at the center of this personal story.

Hundreds of thousands of African Americans left the Jim Crow South for northern cities in the 1960s, where they meet a new Jim Crow: racist housing policies that conspire to keep them out of white communities.

Mental Health Angle: NAMI (National Alliance on of Mental Illness) notes that about 20% of adults in the U.S. (43.8 million) experience mental illness in a given year. All need help, but patients, like the grandmother portrayed in this memoir, were psychotic. In a 2007 article in JAMA Psychiatry, a study shows that the lifetime presence of all psychotic disorders in America is between ~ 3 -3.5%) This book offers a rare insiders view of a couple coping, alone, with a severely mentally ill family member and its detrimental impact on the marriage and children.

Reviews

An Amazon Best-Seller Awards 2019 IPPY Silver Medal Winner in Autobiography/Memoir II (Coming of Age/Family Legacy/Travel) 2019 Chanticleer JOURNEY Book Awards First-Place Winner in Narrative Non-Fiction and Memoir 2019 Next Generation Indie Book Awards: Finalist in Current Events/Social Change 2019 Next Generation Indie Book Awards: Finalist in E-Book Non-fiction 2019 Eric Hoffer Award Finalist in The da Vinci Eye 2019 Foreword Indies Finalist in Adult NonfictionFamily & Relationships 2019 Foreword Indies Finalist in Adult NonfictionMulticultural 2018 Readers' Favorites Book Awards Silver Medal in Non-FictionSocial Issues 2018 International Book Awards Finalist in Multicultural Non-Fiction 2018 New York Book Festival Award: Honorable Mention, Biography/Autobiography 2018 Book of the Year, Nonfiction, Chicago Writers Association 2018 Sarton Women's Book Awards finalist in Memoir Redlined is now included in the Smithsonian Institutions libraries at the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Smithsonians National Museum of American History. Editorial Reviews "Linda Gartzs memoir Redlined offers a 'ringside seat to black/white race relations and the racist mortgage policies that help explain why this intractable social issue remains with us into the 21st century.'" The Atlantic A stunning debut memoir . . . . A rich remembrance of a captivating, transformative era in American history. Kirkus Reviews, starred review . . . an exceptionally rich and readable memoir of family, change, and coming of age in the tumultuous 1960s." Foreword Clarion Reviews, Five Stars Redlined is absolutely riveting from cover to cover, all but impossible to put down. Midwest Book Review, Reviewer's Choice "I didnt just love reading this memoir, I appreciated it. . . . Redlined is a beacon of enlightenment in our current American society. I finished Gartzs memoir feeling educated and hopeful. Readers Favorite, Five Stars In this compelling journey into the depths of racism, Linda Gartz peels back the onion of Americas original sin to a new level in a captivating personal story told through the lives of her Chicago family. Gartz probes the invisibleweb of oppression that affected both whites and blacks. Redlining destroyed the American dream without its victims even knowing it. Bill Kurtis, author of Bill Kurtis On Assignment andThe Death Penalty on Trial: Crisis in American Justice, Peabody and Emmy Award-winner, news anchor for CBS Television network, and TV host for A&E Many watched from afar as Chicago and other major cities underwent rapid racial change in mid-twentieth century America. Linda Gartz lived it . . . with her sharp eye, excellent writing, and unique perspective, she brings this critical and turbulent period to life. Steve Fiffer,coauthor of Jimmie Lee & James: Two Lives, Two Deaths, and the Movement that Changed America Moving and empathetic, Linda Gartzs memoir illuminates the inner worlds of two generations of white working-class Chicagoans as the daughter of landlords who remained in a struggling black community long after their white neighbors had fled . . . a deeply humane perspective on [how] economic need, racism, and ideals of duty shaped the lives of urban white Americans in the twentieth century. Beryl Satter, Professor, Department of History, Rutgers University, and author ofEach Mind a Kingdom: American Women, Sexual Purity, and the New Thought Movement, 18751920 andFamily Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America Gartzs unflinching family memoir offers both intimacy and insight into personal and historical injustices. She traces her parents marriage through joyful and troubled times in their Chicago neighborhood as they confronted rapid racial change in the 1960s. Shedeftly interweaves a story of family striving, domestic resentments, and individual decency with the seismic cultural shifts of Americas social and sexual revolutions. Amanda I. Seligman,Chair, Department of History, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and author of Block by Block: Neighborhoods and Public Policy on Chicagos West Side Fearless and precise in her rendering of the intimate truths of her family, rigorous in her analysis of the banking and housing industries, Gartz has written a book that is impossible to put down. . . . An extraordinary achievement. Sharon Solwitz,author of Once, in Lourdes In this remarkable memoir, Linda Gartz [takes] her readers on a journey that is neither sentimental nor nostalgic. Committed to finding the truth at every turn, she tracksnot only her own experiences but also the social and cultural changes that reshaped twentieth-century America. The stories she tells and the insights she gains are marked always by clarity and depth. Fred Shafer, School of Professional Studies, Northwestern University In Redlined, Linda Gartz explores the contentious elements that define America: family, self-sacrifice, and opportunity, but also inequality, racism, and revolution. Deftly weaving together a treasure trove of detailed firsthand accounts, she provides anabsorbing view into the life of a family unwittingly caught up in both its own domestic struggles and the turbulent social reckonings of the 1960s. Anjali Sachdeva, author of All the Names They Used for God Linda Gartz mines a wealth of family letters, diaries, memories, and history to tell a vitalAmerican story of immigrant dreams, struggles with love, madness, security, work, self-reliance, and heartacheultimately intersecting with what has become the essential national topic, the racism that weaves itself through all our personal and shared histories. Beautifully told and a compelling read. Jim Grimsley, author of Winter Birds, Dream Boy,My Drowning, Comfort and Joy, Mr. Universe and Other Plays, Boulevard, Kirith Kirin, Forgiveness, The Ordinary, The Last Green Tree, Jesus is Sending You This Message, andHow I Shed My Skin With tender and open-eyed concern, Linda Gartz adeptly explores how the human need for recognition and equality is waylaid both by doors slammed against legal access and connection and by the tyrannies of power wielded behind closed doors. Anne Calcagno, Professor, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and author of Love Like a Dog Deeply personal yet wide in scope, Gartzs writing seamlessly blends her parents struggles as landlords on Chicagos West Side with the injustices imposed on African Americans by racist housing policies. Redlined is a vivid and historic account of rapid racial changein the community Gartz and I have both called home. Mary Nelson,founding president of Bethel New Life and faculty at Parliament of the Worlds Religions and Asset Based Community Development Institute at DePaul University (Chicago) Intimate and honest, Gartzs memoir exposes the complex motivations that intertwine the lives of a white couple with their black tenants and renders one of the twentieth centurys most troubled eras through the lives of those who lived it. Sharon DeBartolo Carmack, MFA, CG, author of You Can Write Your Family History and Tell it Short: A Guide to Writing Your Family History in Brief Without a doubt in my mind, Redlined deserves a whopping 4 out of 4 stars. . . . You will be blown away by this book. Online Book Club

Author Bio

Six-time Emmy-honored Linda Gartz is a documentary producer, author, blogger, educator, and archivist. Her documentaries and TV productions have been featured on ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, and Investigation Discovery, syndicated nation-wide. Her educational videos include Begin with Love, hosted by Oprah Winfrey and Grandparenting, hosted by Maya Angelou. Gartzs articles and essays have been published in literary journals, online, and in local and national magazines and newspapers, including The Chicago Tribune. Born in Chicago, she studied at both Northwestern and the University of Munich, and has lived most of her adult life in Evanston, IL. She earned her B.A. and M.A.T. degrees from Northwestern.