In this remarkable memoir, Steve Majors gathers the shards of a broken past to piece together a portrait of a man on an extraordinary journey toward blackness, queerness, and parenthood. High Yella delivers its hard-won lessons on love, life, and family with exceptional grace.
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“NEW PAPERBACKS WORTH READING” – WASHINGTON POST
“A brave reckoning with multiple questions of identity, class, family, race, and other thorny issues. A definitively modern writer wrestles with haunting questions from his family’s hidden past.” – Kirkus Reviews
“In a memoir as gripping and relevant as James McBride’s The Color of Water, Majors bares himself and his family with jaw-dropping honesty. Not since Kiese Laymon’s Heavy have I felt the blood and guts on every page. With a page-turner that reads like a novel, High Yella unflinchingly examines the impact of systemic racism, sexism, poverty and homophobia on one American family. In his struggle to create a new family of his own, free of the generational trauma he inherited, Majors digs deep with piercing self-reflection. The great triumph is that High Yella is not only one man’s unique and vital story, but also an example, a path forward for us all to heal from the shameful legacies that haunt us individually and as a nation.” – David Santos Donaldson, author of the award-winning Greenland.
“This delicately crafted memoir is a testament to the unquantifiable things that connect family – not cells and DNA, but shared experiences and unconditional love.” – Debbie Bernstein Holinstat, author of Survivors Club.
“What are the complex histories that roil under our composed, accomplished surfaces? Steve Majors has brought his to the fore. He’s written a gripping, moving, and wrenchingly honest book about his life that I couldn’t put down. He was born to write.” – Pia Z. Ehrhardt, author of Famous Fathers & Other Stories and Now We Are Sixty.
“Steve Majors’s memoir, High Yella, is a feast of literary brilliance. As a Black child of the American South, I understand the weight of the title and the struggle of those who bear it. This is why I was so deeply moved by Majors’ courage and vulnerability in opening up about his struggle for a definable racial identity. Inside this struggle are the lives of three generations—their stories raw, beautiful, authentic, and unrelentingly poignant. Full of immensely colorful people, signature cultural moments, hysterical colloquial phrases, and some of the best prose I have read in a very long time, High Yella is a gift to society and a book that I will always treasure. ” – Jeffrey Blount, author of “The Emancipation of Evan Walls and Mr. Jimmy From Around The Way.
“Steve Majors’s heart-wrenching and honest family memoir never sugarcoats, romanticizes, or dehumanizes. Whether he’s tackling growing up poor and Black, family abuse, racial passing, substance misuse, interracial relationships, marriage, or raising adopted kids as a gay dad, Majors tells every part of this singular, moving, and necessary story with clear eyes and care. Just like family, this beautiful, heartbreaking book will find its way into your bones.” – Eman Quotah, author of Bride of the Sea.
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