In the Garden of Our Dreams - by Shirlee T Haizlip (Paperback)

About the Book

A heartwarming, inspiring love story about how a middle-class African-American couple built a strong and lasting life together through four decades of social, racial, and political change. 35 photos.

Book Synopsis

Shirlee Taylor Haizlip, bestselling author of The Sweeter the Juice, and her husband, Harold C. Haizlip describe, with unwavering commitment to each other, their families, and their race, what hard work, good luck, and most important, unshakable love can accomplish.

Told in their alternating voices, In the Garden of Our Dreams is a portrait of their nearly forty-year love affair. Born into a generation reared in segregation, Harold, the Southerner, and Shirlee, the Northerner, strove not only to marry their individual differences in reaching for common happiness, but also joined the larger struggle of their generation to achieve integration and racial equality. In this intimate and moving memoir, the couple reflects on how they defined themselves as African Americans during some of the most important years in America's struggle with issues of race, class, and equality. Uplifting and romantic, In the Garden of Our Dreams gives all couples hope in this time of increasing cynicism about the value of marriage and the effect each individual can have in the larger struggle against society's ills.

Review Quotes

"Transcends time and bigotry. . . . A gem and well worth reading." --Los Angeles Sentinel

"Their marriage is enviable, and luckily for us they have chosen to write about it in their richly detailed memoir." --The New York Times Book Review

"Refreshing in its focus on the positives of African-American family life--told with an eloquence that reflects the Haizlips' charmed life." --Emerge

"A welcome antidote . . . provides a counternarrative for a reading audience exhausted by the automatic link of blackness with poverty, social woes, and family dysfunction." --Chicago Tribune

About the Author

Shirlee Taylor Haizlip is the author of the bestselling memoir The Sweeter the Juice, a New York Times notable book. Harold C. Haizlip is a prominent educator and innovator who is presently the Western Regional Director of Communities In Schools, Inc. They live in Los Angeles.