Jenniemae & James

Starred review from December 14, 2009
A mathematician, friend of Albert Einstein, and father of two employed an illiterate, numbers-savvy maid to take care of his affluent Washington, D.C., home, and an improbable friendship ensued. In this thoroughly engaging memoir, Newman, the daughter of James Newman, author of 1956’s The World of Mathematics
, wonderfully recreates the early Civil Rights era when the miraculous Jenniemae Harrington came into the family’s lives and rendered their emotionally reticent, offbeat household more warmly human. Jenniemae was a large African-American woman from rural Alabama who lived with her sister in the Washington ghetto when she first came to work for the Newmans in 1948. She spouted folksy wisdom (e.g., “Only a fool will argue against the sun”) and gambled (with phenomenal success) on numbers that had occurred to her in her dreams. As James worked in his home office during the day, he learned of Jenniemae’s daily numbers betting, although she refused to admit it was gambling (“It’s the Lord’s gift,” was how she explained it). Over the years, their endearingly antagonistic friendship deepened, and they managed to see the other through numerous crises (including Jenniemae’s rape by a bus driver and James’s marital and girlfriend grief). The author, as a keen observer growing up in this fraught household, absorbed the emotional ramifications of Jenniemae’s presence, and fashions dialogue that is pitch-perfect.

February 15, 2010
A grown daughter remembers her troubled, genius father's endearing friendship with their charismatic maid.

James Newman was a mathematical genius with an almost incomprehensible mind. He entered college at age 14, finished law school before 21, coined the term"googol" and authored the seminal text, The World of Mathematics (1956). Personally, though, he was troubled, emotionally distant and addicted to infidelity—he married three times before he turned 24, each relationship ending because of his affairs. In this quiet memoir, his daughter, Brooke Newman (The Little Tern, 2002), remembers an endearing side to her father—his odd, lovely friendship with their maid. Jenniemae was black, illiterate, immensely overweight, fervently religious and desperately poor. Given the circumstances, it was particularly unusual in the 1940s and'50s for her to strike up a friendship with her white male employer. They bonded initially over numbers, though their experiences with them were quite different. Jenniemae gambled her hard-earned money every morning on numbers that came to her in religious dreams and was popular in her community for having good luck. Logical James was fascinated with her system, but Jenniemae would never share her secrets with him. Soon James was doing things for her that made the rest of the family skeptical, such as installing a separate phone line for Jenniemae in the maid's quarters for her private use. Jenniemae was the one constant in the Newman family, running an incredibly efficient household and essentially raising the author and her brother in the face of feuding, often absent parents. As James descended further into the world of abstract mathematics, Jenniemae strangely became a constant to him as well, and it is their relationship that comprises Newman's fondest memories of her father.

A low-key, sweet portrait of an unusual friendship. Jenniemae is a scene-stealer, though, and the strongest parts of the memoir focus on her and her community.

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March 1, 2010
Growing up, Newman witnessed how an amazing affinity for numbers formed the basis of an enduring and unlikely friendship between her father, a brilliant and erratic white mathematician, and Jenniemae, the illiterate black housekeeper who held their fragile family together through the 1940s and 1950s. This is not one of those noble stories of how a poor black woman rescues a dysfunctional white family, though there is plenty of dysfunctionality. James and Jenniemae respect one anothers abilities and rely on one another through lifes vicissitudes. James chronic womanizing threatens the family, while his egomania and his work with Albert Einstein and others to urge peaceful use of atomic energy during the 1950s threaten his career. His wife, Ruth, plagued with borderline schizophrenia and a tortured acceptance of her husbands philandering, adds to a household where the children saw too much and understood too little. Newman is unsparing yet loving in this complex portrait of her father, author of the classic The World of Mathematics, and the woman essential to her childhood.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)