Darkroom: A Memoir in Black and White

By Lila Quintero Weaver

Darkroom: A Memoir in Black and White is an arresting and moving personal story about childhood, race, and identity in the American South, rendered in stunning illustrations by the author, Lila Quintero Weaver.
 
In 1961, when Lila was five, she and her family emigrated from Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Marion, Alabama, in the heart of Alabama’s Black Belt. As educated, middle-class Latino immigrants in a region that was defined by segregation, the Quinteros occupied a privileged vantage from which to view the racially charged culture they inhabited. Weaver and her family were firsthand witnesses to key moments in the civil rights movement.  But Darkroom is her personal story as well: chronicling what it was like being a Latina girl in the Jim Crow South, struggling to understand both a foreign country and the horrors of our nation’s race relations. Weaver, who was neither black nor white, observed very early on the inequalities in the American culture, with its blonde and blue-eyed feminine ideal. Throughout her life, Lila has struggled to find her place in this society and fought against the discrimination around her.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University Alabama Press
• Release date: Feb 16, 2012
• ISBN: 9780817386191

Book preview

Copyright © 2012 by Lila Quintero Weaver

The University of Alabama Press

Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0380

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

Typeface: Franklin Gothic and Blambot

The paper on which this book is printed meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Weaver, Lila Quintero.

Darkroom : a memoir in black and white / Lila Quintero Weaver.

   p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-8173-5714-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-8173-8619-1 (electronic)

   1. Weaver, Lila Quintero. 2. Alabama—Social conditions—20th century. 3. Civil rights movements—Alabama—History—20th century. 4. Alabama—Race relations—History—20th century. 5. Argentine Americans—Alabama—Biography. 6. Alabama—Biography. I. Title.

CT275.W3497A3 2012

976.1092—dc23

[B] 2011036117

Author’s Note The views expressed in this book are not necessarily shared by my siblings or other persons that witnessed or experienced the events recounted.

In memory of

Mama & Daddy,

whose gifts are without number.

To Paul,

who keeps on giving,

and to

Jude, Benjamin, & Caitlin,

who’ve inherited these collective

treasures.

I love you all.

CONTENTS

Prologue: Home Movies

Chapter 1. In the Dark

Chapter 2. Passage

Chapter 3. Blending In

Chapter 4. Ginny's Books

Chapter 5. Ancestral Lines

Chapter 6. An American education

Chapter 7. Dear Argentina

Chapter 8. Good News, Bad News

Chapter 9. Know

Reviews for Darkroom

[themadhatters_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I absolutely loved this coming-of-age story about a Latina girl growing up in the midst of the civil rights movement. As a graphic novel, it did a fantastic job of providing visuals of this important time.

[rosa.mill · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

So I have a vague memory of requesting this after reading a review of it before I went on vacation. When I came back and saw it waiting for me I kind of had a huh? moment. I'm actually very glad that I requested it. It is the memoir of a hispanic woman growing up in a small town in Alabama during the Civil Rights movement. At the time as the author puts it, there were no slurs for them in Alabama yet. She talks a little about feeling like she never quite fit in but a majority of the book is about what happened and how both she and her family dealt with it and sometimes to the towns reaction to the way they dealt with it.

She also talks about how her family kept their ties with family in Argentina which is something that really interests me having just visited my family in Spain for the first time in 7 years. She talks about trying to keep family life and home life separate. Immigrant children and the children of immigrants will be able to relate in addition to anyone who has ever been a race or ethnicity that people just didn't know what to do with. The back drop of the civil rights movement just makes the whole story more interesting. She flat out talks about what she did notice growing up and what she didn't, which I think about a lot now. Things that were going on that I did and did not notice but probably should have when I was growing up.

[sullywriter_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

An exceptional graphic memoir. Lila Quintero was a young girl when she immigrated from Argentia to Marion, Alabama with her family in the 1960s where she witnessed segregation and racial violence. A personal story that offers wonderful insights into the immigrant experience and the Civil Rights Movement from a unique perspective.

[librolindsay · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I liked the potential for this story--growing up Argentinian in 1960s Alabama--but it didn't prove as striking of a perspective as I expected it to be.

[mjspear_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Lila and her family have emigrated from Argentina to the United States in 1961. They end up in Marion, Alabama at a time with racial tension and changes. The author is a brown-skin Latina in a word defined by black and white. The art is beautiful (it's a graphic novel), the setting is exciting, but the book doesn't capitalize on its great potential. It is, at times, hard to follow (members of the family go back and forth to Argentina) The language is sometimes stilted. Recountings of local uprisings are blunted by her narrow perspective (she was often confined to the house) and the high drama is ... meh... (being called a " n-lover" e.g.) There are some fine moments: the first black student, her black librarian (sadly, not a warm person)... her verbatim recounting of the AL history book). This memoir could have been so much more...!... I wish she'd wait a few years and add more detail/reflection.