Chasing Me to My Grave

An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South

By: Winfred Rembert, Erin I. Kelly, Bryan Stevenson - foreword

Narrated by: Dion Graham, Karen Chilton

Length: 6 hrs and 47 mins

Publisher's summary

Winner of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Biography

“A compelling and important history that this nation desperately needs to hear.” (Bryan Stevenson, New York Times best-selling author of Just Mercy and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative)

Winfred Rembert grew up in a family of Georgia field laborers and joined the civil rights movement as a teenager. He was arrested after fleeing a demonstration, later survived a near-lynching at the hands of law enforcement, and spent the next seven years on chain gangs.

During that time he met the undaunted Patsy, who would become his wife. Years later, at the age of 51 and with Patsy’s encouragement, he started drawing and painting scenes from his youth using leather tooling skills he learned in prison.

Chasing Me to My Grave presents Rembert’s breathtaking body of work alongside his story, as told to Tufts Philosopher Erin I. Kelly. Rembert calls forth vibrant scenes of Black life on Cuthbert, Georgia’s Hamilton Avenue, where he first glimpsed the possibility of a life outside the cotton field. As he pays tribute, exuberant and heartfelt, to Cuthbert’s Black community and the people, including his wife, Patsy, who helped him to find the courage to revisit a traumatic past, Rembert brings to life the promise and the danger of civil rights protest, the brutalities of incarceration, his search for his mother’s love, and the epic bond he found with Patsy.

Vivid, confrontational, revelatory, and complex, Chasing Me to My Grave is a searing memoir in prose and paintings that celebrates Black life and summons listeners to confront painful and urgent realities at the heart of American history and society.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2021 Winfred Rembert and Erin I. Kelly (P)2021 Blackstone Publishing

The Ending is the Beginning

The track are HARD TO FIND. when your searching for your mother's love?
Beautifully written.

Couldnt put this down, I had to keep listening

I loved this book, the vocals are on point and emotional, the story itself is beautiful, real, raw, and fully encompassed all sides of Winfred, both good and bad. I really care about his success and can relate to some of the pain he feels. it's a must read/listen.

Chasing Me to My Grave

What a spectacular memoir with stellar narration. Listening to this audiobook was like hearing the life experience firsthand of the man who lived through it, plus one chapter told from the viewpoint of his wife. The composition of the storytelling is so well put together and the language feels authentic. While I’ve got a few decades under my belt, I haven’t been around as long as Winfred Rembert, nor do I share anything at all similar to his life experience, but I find it immensely relatable the way he reminisces about the good parts of an “old fashioned life” and gently admonishes today’s youth for their lack of awareness of and appreciation for what’s come before, such as the civil rights movement of the 60’s. This book was rewarding and I’m so glad I listened to it on audio. Fortunately, I was able to reference the written version also and see the photos and artwork included there that are missed by those who only access the audiobook.

Winfred

Wonderful, meaningful, unforgettable.
So glad to meet this man through his words and art… google his art as you listen

Story well told

It was a story I didn’t want to hear and wished that I didn’t believe. It should be heard by many.

Amazing Man; Amazing Book

I'm a white man who was born in Americus GA in the 60s. This was exactly when Mr Rembert was experiencing some of the worst violence. Americus is about 40 miles from Cuthbert. Americus is a small town, but Cuthbert is tiny.

Everything mentioned in this book is 100% true. This was the Americus I grew up in. I remember the cross burnings, violence, and hatred all too well. In fact, it wasn't until 2000 when I returned home for my mother's funeral, that I had eaten at an integrated restaurant in Americus.

The hatred, prejudice, and bigotry was the very reason I left Americus. It's still there today, just a little more subtle. In 2022 when visiting family, I had to confront the manager at one of the local chain restaurants because my waitress made a disparaging remark about a table of black women she was serving. The exact same day I had to correct my brother's niece-by-marriage when she made a disparaging comment about the black family who lived across the street.

What a privilege it was to listen to Mr Rembert's story. I wish I had known him. The fact that he has put down some of the most important events of his life on leather and in this book makes all of us better people. I can't imagine just how difficult it must have been reliving them, much less, experiencing them for the first time.

This book should be required reading for every high school student in America. It angers me when people say, "Why are you bringing up that ancient history?" I think from now on the answer should be 1) so we can educate people, 2) so we let perpetrators of hate, violence, and bigotry know that their actions will not go unchallenged or unexposed, all the while looking them directly in the eye because they are likely one of the perpetrators.

Thank you Winfred & Patsy Rembert

PERFECT 10. Best Memoir! Buy Audio and Book!!

I sat in silence after reading and listening to the end of this deeply moving memoir. I was touched on such a profound level it took me a while to come back to full consciousness and aware of my surroundings. There are so many layers to this story; I consider it divine intervention that this book found me. It was an honor to have read about Winfred Rembert the artist, father, man, friend, historical hero who embodies the power and strength of the black man's spirit. His wife is the eternal light that kept his fire burning; their love story is a god-given gift to us all. I can't describe how important this book is to our African-American story of power and raw truth. I am changed on a soul level from reading about his life and the way he was able to retell the intimate emotional experience of just living black in America. You must listen to the Audiobook's narrator, Dion Graham, who was powerful and embodied the full spirit of Winfred Rembert's soul. You must buy the book to enjoy the images of his artwork.

Amazing Memoir

Winfred’s life is the stuff of films. That he survived so many run ins with “authorities” is mind bending. Then to turn that pain into art that both tells his story and attempts to heal is astonishing. This book is filled with love: love for life; love for self discovery; love for neighbors; and love for wife (Patsy) and family. Love is the secret ingredient.

Remarkable Memoir, Both Beautiful and Brutal

This memoir will linger in my memory for quite a while. It reminds me of the metaphor of "walking a mile in another person's shoes." Sadly, I doubt that any of the stories Rembert tells of growing up in the latter years of the Jim Crow era in a small town in Georgia will come as a surprise to an African American reader, but for most white readers, it will be an eye-opening window into the sometimes harrowing experience of living as a Black person where racism was a daily lived experience, a world where virtually every white person called you or referred to you, reflexively, by the n-word and almost never by your name. One might think that these scenes he describes are from an era long-past, but then you remember no, it was in the lifetime of many, including me, now alive. Beautifully told story, highly recommended.

Extraordinary Story, Powerfully Told

I just finished listening and find myself moved deeply by his life story. His words are as expressive as his art and reveal a courageous man who was able to persevere through impossible circumstances and emerge with his love for his beloved Patsy as vital as ever.
A towering achievement!