I place Colored People alongside Angela's Ashes as one of the best works of memoir in recent years. He doesn't moralize; he just tells the honest story. This is a story that, to my knowledge, has not been told elsewhere. It is a story about the freedom and comfort and the pain of a segregated commuinty, and the heartbreak that came with leaving some of that world behind. Most things are deeper and more complex than we like to think they are. Colored People brings that concept forward in a way that no other book has. The people whose expressed frustration with not being able to keep the characters straight are missing the point - this isn't a murder mystery and it doesn't make any difference. Buy it. Read it. Share it. I only wish I'd done so when it first came out.