Finding Samuel Lowe

February 1, 2015
A spirited pursuit of her mother's roots takes one African-American woman from Jamaica to Harlem to China.A former NBC executive who is now CEO of a family investment group based in Chicago, Madison (who lives in Los Angeles) proves a formidable, dogged detective in tracing the complicated ramifications of her Chinese grandfather's work in Jamaica and return to China in the early 1930s. A teenager when he arrived in Jamaica in 1905, Samuel Lowe came from the Hakka minority ethnic group noted for its entrepreneurial drive; soon, he set up one thriving "Chiney shop" after another. He developed romantic attachments with the local ladies; in liaisons not unusual in Jamaica at the time, he fathered several children by different women. The first of these "outside children" was the author's mother, Nell Vera Lowe, whose distinctive Chinese look would cast her as a kind of pariah in her community. In time, Lowe married a family-designated Chinese bride sent from home, who bore him several more children. Thus, when Lowe returned with his wife to China during the business-stifling Depression, he left Nell behind, among other children, who scarcely knew him or each other. Badly treated by her mother, who resented her Chinese looks, Nell eventually immigrated to New York and became a citizen, raising her children largely on her own when her Jamaican husband proved troublesome and unfaithful. Madison traces this tale of loss through her mother's story: Without education, Nell was doomed to a hard life of work as a seamstress, and she endured welfare and marginalization with a ferocious protectiveness toward her children. As the author pursues Lowe's family in China, arranging visits and sifting through minute ancestral details, she proves a valiant avenger of her mother's difficult past. A well-structured memoir told in brief, punchy vignettes alternating between past and present.

COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from February 1, 2015
Growing up in Harlem, Madison wondered why her parents, who separated when she was three, never talked about their relatives. She was especially curious about her grandfather, Samuel Lowe, but all her tough, chronically depressed, and exotic-looking Jamaican Chinese mother would say about him was that he went back to China and died. The mystery of her mother's anguish and rage haunted Madison even as she followed her command to excel, achieving celebrated success as an NBC executive, a vice president at General Electric, and a CEO for the investment company she cofounded with her brothers. Once she was able to fully devote herself to researching her heritage, Madison began uncovering dramatic stories of ambition and heartache spun from a web of imperialism, slavery, and immigration and linking together China, Jamaica, and the U.S. Madison vividly and poignantly recounts the struggles of her parents and grandparents as they faced the stigma of interracial bloodlines and tells the fascinating story of the Lowes' people, the Hakka, a nomadic minority from northern China famous for their entrepreneurship. And what a momentous meeting it was when Madison and her American family journeyed to the Lowes' village in China and met their long-lost relatives, who joyously redrew the family tree, which spans 3,000 years. A profoundly moving and revelatory memoir of far-reaching discovery and affirmation.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)