Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family
Condoleezza Rice, 2010
Crown Publishing
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307888471
Summary
Condoleezza Rice has excelled as a diplomat, political scientist, and concert pianist. Her achievements run the gamut from helping to oversee the collapse of communism in Europe and the decline of the Soviet Union, to working to protect the country in the aftermath of 9-11, to becoming only the second woman—and the first black woman ever—to serve as Secretary of State.
But until she was 25 she never learned to swim.
Not because she wouldn't have loved to, but because when she was a little girl in Birmingham, Alabama, Commissioner of Public Safety Bull Connor decided he'd rather shut down the city's pools than give black citizens access.
Throughout the 1950's, Birmingham's black middle class largely succeeded in insulating their children from the most corrosive effects of racism, providing multiple support systems to ensure the next generation would live better than the last. But by 1963, when Rice was applying herself to her fourth grader's lessons, the situation had grown intolerable. Birmingham was an environment where blacks were expected to keep their head down and do what they were told—or face violent consequences. That spring two bombs exploded in Rice’s neighborhood amid a series of chilling Klu Klux Klan attacks. Months later, four young girls lost their lives in a particularly vicious bombing.
So how was Rice able to achieve what she ultimately did?
Her father, John, a minister and educator, instilled a love of sports and politics. Her mother, a teacher, developed Condoleezza’s passion for piano and exposed her to the fine arts. From both, Rice learned the value of faith in the face of hardship and the importance of giving back to the community. Her parents’ fierce unwillingness to set limits propelled her to the venerable halls of Stanford University, where she quickly rose through the ranks to become the university’s second-in-command. An expert in Soviet and Eastern European Affairs, she played a leading role in U.S. policy as the Iron Curtain fell and the Soviet Union disintegrated. Less than a decade later, at the apex of the hotly contested 2000 presidential election, she received the exciting news—just shortly before her father’s death—that she would go on to the White House as the first female National Security Advisor.
As comfortable describing lighthearted family moments as she is recalling the poignancy of her mother’s cancer battle and the heady challenge of going toe-to-toe with Soviet leaders, Rice holds nothing back in this remarkably candid telling. This is the story of Condoleezza Rice that has never been told, not that of an ultra-accomplished world leader, but of a little girl—and a young woman—trying to find her place in a sometimes hostile world and of two exceptional parents, and an extended family and community, that made all the difference. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—November 14. 1954
• Where—Birmingham, Alabama, USA
• Education—B.A., Ph.D, University of Colorado;
M.A., University of Notre Dame
• Currently—teaches at Stanford, Palo Alto, California
Condoleezza Rice is an American political scientist and diplomat. She served as the 66th US Secretary of State, and was the first African-American woman secretary of state, as well as the second African American (after Colin Powell), and the second woman (after Madeleine Albright). Rice was President Bush's National Security Advisor during his first term, making her the first woman to serve in that position.
Before joining the Bush administration, she was a professor of political science at Stanford University where she served as Provost from 1993 to 1999. Rice also served on the National Security Council as the Soviet and East European Affairs Advisor to President George H.W. Bush during the dissolution of the Soviet Union and German reunification.
Following her confirmation as Secretary of State, Rice pioneered a policy of Transformational Diplomacy, with a focus on democracy in the greater Middle East. Her emphasis on supporting democratically elected governments faced challenges as Hamas captured a popular majority in Palestinian elections, and influential countries including Saudi Arabia and Egypt maintained authoritarian systems with U.S. support. While Secretary of State, she chaired the Millennium Challenge Corporation's board of directors.
In March 2009, Rice returned to Stanford University as a political science professor and the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution. In September 2010, Rice became a faculty member of the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a director of its Global Center for Business and the Economy. (Adapted from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
Extraordinary, Ordinary People ends where most readers would probably rather it began: with the 2000 election.... [It]is instead an origins story, a minor-key memoir mostly about Ms. Rice’s upbringing in Birmingham, Ala.... This memoir is teeming with fascinating detail...[yet] often aloof. There are few unguarded moments, little humor....Surely there’s a keen and kaleidoscopic mind in there. But that mind is rarely apparent in this softly flowing book.
Dwight Garner - New York Times
Prose so spare it lays bare a child’s pain…full of raw vignettes, episodes that should jolt our post-racial sensibilities…The key to Rice’s composure in office—which was a mix of womanly grace and analytical rigor—lies in the manner in which she was raised. In this, America owes a debt to John and Angelena Rice, parents extraordinarily pushy, parents extraordinarily brave.
Wall Street Journal
Former secretary of state Rice only briefly treats her tenure during the second Bush administration in favor of a straightforward, reverential chronicle of her upbringing under two teachers in the segregated Deep South. Rice acknowledges upfront the complicated, intertwined history of blacks and whites in America, which lent a lightening of skin to her forebears that was looked upon favorably at the time. Her father, John Wesley Rice Jr., came from a family of well-educated itinerant preachers in Louisiana, while the family of her mother, Angelena Ray, were Birmingham, Ala., landowners; both were teachers at Fairfield Industrial High School and determined to live "full and productive lives" in Birmingham, despite the blight of segregation (e.g., poll tests in the largely Democratic South resolved John Rice to become a lifelong Republican). Cocooned in an educational and musical environment, Rice was a high-achieving only child. Yet the encroaching racial tension broke open in Birmingham in the form of store boycotts, bombings, and demonstrations. Eventually, the family moved to Denver, where Rice attended the university, majoring first in piano then political science, due to the influence of professor and former Czech diplomat Josef Korbel. Rice moves fleetingly through her subsequent education at Notre Dame and Stanford. Swept into Washington Republican politics by Colin Powell and others, she sketches the "wild ride" accompanying the Soviet Union's demise, but overall records a thrilling, inspiring life of achievement.
Publishers Weekly
Vivid and heartfelt writing.... Rice’s graceful memoir is a personal, multigenerational look into her own, and our country’s, past.... Highly recommended.
Library Journal
Looking for a blow-by-blow account of Condoleezza Rice’s years as George W. Bush’s secretary of state? You would do well to find one of the many Rice biographies already on the shelves. In this remarkably clear-eyed and candid autobiography, Rice focuses instead on her fascinating coming-of-age during the stormy civil rights years in Birmingham, Alabama.
Bookpage
Rice presents a frank, poignant, and loving portrait of a family that maintained its closeness through cancer, death, career ups and downs, and turbulent changes in American society. —Vanessa Bush
Booklist
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Extraordinary, Ordinary People:
1. Discuss the Jim Crow environment of Birmingham, Alabama, where Rice was born. What were the roadblocks thrown in the way of African-Americans? If you've read The Help, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, The Warmth of Other Suns, or The Dry Grass of August, how does Rice's memoir of that era compare with those books' accounts?
2. Talk about the environment that Rice's parents created for her, the ways in which they protected her from the worst excesses of Jim Crow. How did they encourage, inspire, and shape her life to become the accomplished woman she is today?
3. Rice's parents, she writes, held to the maxim that their daughter should be "twice as good" as any white people with whom she would eventually compete. "This was declared as a matter of fact, not a point for debate," she writes. Is she right—that during the 1960s-80's blacks needed to out perform whites in order to succeed? Is it true today?
4. Rice's IQ measures 136. Do you believe her own natural gifts would have allowed her to rise to the top despite parental influence? In other words, what is at stake here—nature or nurture?
5. At a time when society is concerned about over-scheduling childhood activities, Rice's childhood routine is breathtaking: up at 4:30 a.m for skating, school at 7:00, piano and more skating after school, and bedtime at 9:30. Do Rice's later accomplishments lend credence to the idea that a highly structured childhood—and its resulting discipline—leads to a lifetime of success?
6. As a child, Rich received her share of insults and exclusion. She writes that she developed a "retaliatory impulse." What does she mean—why "retaliatory"? What incidences created that impulse? Has that impulse been significant in shaping Rice's stellar career?
7. What about the political beliefs of Rice's father, John Wesley Rice? Talk about his support of the 2nd Amendment, his affiliation with the Republican Party, his decision not to march with the Rev. Martin Luther King in 1963, and his unlikely friendship with Black Panther leader Stokely Carmichael? How unusual were those beliefs for his era, his class, his race? What does Condoleezza mean when she writes that her father liked "the contestation of ideas"?
8. Rice, herself, is a Republican—an unusual affiliation for most, or at least many, African-Americans. She explains that she would rather be ignored by Republicans than patronized by Democrats. What does she mean?
9. In what way does Rice support affirmative action? How is her support similar to, or different from, other Republicans...Democrats...or African-Americans?
10. Talk about Rice's philosophy, which she says was taught to her: "there are no excuses and there is no place for victims." Do you agree or disagree?
11. How much of her inner-life does Condoleezza Rice share with her readers? New York Times reviewer, Dwight Garner, wrote that her book "is not especially reflective. Her energy is directed out, not in." Do you agree—or disagree—with his observation? Does she go deep enough for you, would you have liked more personal reflection? Or is that not the purpose of her memoir?
12. Talk about the role that mentors play in Rice's rise. Talk about mentors in general—have you had a mentor, someone who has guided you through the labyrinth of life, school, or career? How important are mentors?
13. Have you come away from this book feeling differently about Condoleezza Rice? Did it change—or affirm—the way you view her? Do you feel the book enlightens you about who Condoleezza is as a person, not just as a title or position?
14. What about this book surprised you? What did you learn?
15. What does the future hold for Condoleezza Rice? Do you see her re-entering the arena of politics and government? Could she have a future as a possible candidate for national office?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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