Nine Years Under by Sheri Booker

Nine Years Under by Sheri Booker

A dazzling and darkly comic memoir about coming of age in a black funeral home in Baltimore

Sheri Booker was only fifteen when she started working at Wylie Funeral Home in West Baltimore. She had no idea her summer job would become nine years of immersion into a hidden world. Reeling from the death of her beloved great aunt, Sheri found comfort in the funeral home and soon had the run of the place. With AIDS and gang violence threatening to wipe out a generation of black men, Wylie was never short on business.

As families came together to bury one of their own, Booker was privy to their most intimate moments of grief and despair. But along with the sadness, Booker encountered moments of dark humor: brawls between mistresses and widows, and car crashes at McDonald's with dead bodies in tow. While she never got over her terror of the embalming room, Booker learned to expect the unexpected and to never, ever cry. Nine Years Under offers readers an unbelievable glimpse into an industry in the backdrop of all our lives.

Sheri Booker has a BA in political science from the College of Notre Dame of Maryland and an MFA in creative nonfiction from Goucher College. A writer, poet, spoken word artist, photographer, and teacher, she currently lives in Baltimore.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781592407125
ISBN 10	1592407129
Title	Nine Years Under
Author	Sheri Booker
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Penguin Putnam Inc
Year published	2013-05-30
Number of pages	272
Prizes	Short-listed for Hurston/Wright LEGACY Award (Nonfiction) 2014
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.