Davis includes wonderful details about growing up as the daughter of a numbers runner ... Davis lovingly describes a childhood full of creature comforts ... But she juxtaposes nearly every detail of the good life with the slow decay of Detroit around her ... Davis accomplishes this through archival research ... Especially exhilarating is her history of lotteries ... Davis’s book is accessible, her language plain and direct. She has a cleareyed understanding of what it means to be poor and what kind of opportunities money creates ...The World According to Fannie Davis would make a thrilling film ... We need more stories like Fannie’s—the triumph and good life of a lucky black woman in a deeply corrupt world.
While Fannie Davis shines as the central figure, and deservedly so, the Davis family story reads like a chapter of the American experience. But theirs is a story usually left out of history books or glossed over with little attention paid to the lives of the people who lived these experiences. This book corrects that omission ... For readers who crave the richer, fuller history of America than is usually imparted by school books, Davis emerges as a valuable and needed voice...But mostly her book stands as a loving tribute to a remarkable woman, her mother.
The World According to Fannie Davis is daughter’s gesture of loving defiance, an act of reclamation, an absorbing portrait of her mother in full ... Blending memoir and social history, she recounts her mother’s extraordinary story alongside the larger context of Motor City’s rise and fall ... the novelist in Davis knows that Fannie’s whole story was more complicated than a daughter’s protectiveness will allow.
Moving ... Davis' writing feels rooted in the city and its changing landscape. Combining historical research with extensive interviews, The World According to Fannie Davis is an engrossing tribute to a vibrant, hardworking, unforgettable woman.
... scintillating ... partly a love letter to a larger-than-life woman and partly an explanation and defense of the 'lucrative shadow economy' of the numbers game, which was an ingenious way for African Americans to circumvent the economic barriers white society had placed in their path ... Davis doesn’t try to sugarcoat her hometown’s exhaustively documented ill ... This book, for all its abundant strengths, does have flaws. Davis writes that her mother drove a Pontiac Riviera, while GM’s Buick division produced the elegant Riviera. And she describes trips across the Ambassador Bridge to eat at Chinese restaurants in Quebec, while the Ambassador Bridge connects Detroit and Windsor, Ontario. A competent copy editor would have caught such slips, but that doesn’t mitigate the damage they do to a writer’s authority ... But such slips do nothing to dull the luster of this important book ... With her new book, Bridgett M. Davis has started running with some very fast company.
... compelling ... the book is not academic in tone. Davis’ account of her mother’s life and business is first and foremost a loving memoir ... The World According to Fannie Davis is an inspiring tale of love, loyalty and prosperity against all odds.
Highly compelling ... Placing her subject in the larger historical contexts of the African-American and urban experiences and the histories of Detroit and of underground entrepreneurship embodied in the Numbers, and framing it within numerous vital postwar trends, the author is especially insightful about how her mother embodied the emergence of a 'blue collar, black-bourgeoisie' ... This is not a story about capitalizing on degeneracy. It is one of hope and hustling in a world where to have the former almost demanded the latter ... This outstanding book is a tribute to one woman but will surely speak to the experiences of many.
Lively and heartfelt ... This charming tale of a strong and inspirational woman offers a tantalizing glimpse into the past, savoring the good without sugarcoating the bad.
