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Villard
March 2012
On Sale: February 28, 2012
334 pages ISBN: 0345516028 EAN: 9780345516022 Kindle: B004W3FIZS Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction Memoir
In this powerful, affecting, and unflinching memoir, a
daughter looks back on her unconventional childhood with
deaf parents in rural Texas while trying to reconcile it to
her present life—one in which her father is serving a
twenty-year sentence in a maximum-security prison.
As a child, Kambri Crews wished that she’d been born deaf so
that she, too, could fully belong to the tight-knit Deaf
community that embraced her parents. Her beautiful mother
was a saint who would swiftly correct anyone’s notion that
deaf equaled dumb. Her handsome father, on the other hand,
was more likely to be found hanging out with the sinners.
Strong, gregarious, and hardworking, he managed to turn a
wild plot of land into a family homestead complete with
running water and electricity. To Kambri, he was Daniel
Boone, Frank Lloyd Wright, Ben Franklin, and Elvis Presley
all rolled into one.
But if Kambri’s dad was Superman, then the hearing world was
his kryptonite. The isolation that accompanied his deafness
unlocked a fierce temper—a rage that a teenage Kambri
witnessed when he attacked her mother, and that culminated
fourteen years later in his conviction for another violent
crime.
With a smart mix of brutal honesty and blunt humor, Kambri
Crews explores her complicated bond with her father—which
begins with adoration, moves to fear, and finally arrives at
understanding—as she tries to forge a new connection between
them while he lives behind bars. Burn Down the Ground is a
brilliant portrait of living in two worlds—one hearing, the
other deaf; one under the laid-back Texas sun, the other
within the energetic pulse of New York City; one mired in
violence, the other rife with possibility—and heralds the
arrival of a captivating new voice.
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