The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother’s Life in the Detroit Numbers
Written and Narrated By: Bridgett M. Davis
Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins
Loooooved Fannie! Wanted to strangle Bridgett Davis, though
Seriously! Over TEN hours for a story about a whizbang of a mom that she devoted maybe two hours to? I’m dying, I tell you; dying!
If you decide to step into the audiobook that is The World According to Fannie Davis, get ready for a fantastic opening scene. Fabulous. We get to see Fannie Davis at her in-your-face, stand-up-and-be-proud-of-yourself best. She’s teaching her daughter, Bridgett, to be herself, unapologetic, standing up for who she is. (By the way, Bridgett changed the spelling and pronunciation of her name later on in life when she was driven by her embarrassment as to how her mom made a living—aaaaaargh!)
But thaaaaat’s where it all stops, for the most part. Mostly, we get to see Fannie through the eyes of family members and members of the community whom she served and whom she helped through the years. Because Bridgett, my dears? She has very little to say about her mother. She goes so far as to dig into her teen-aged diary entries rather than her own memories. She looks up Numbers lists, she goes by Detroit history. By herself, however, she’s embarrassed by what her mother did, even as all the money her mother brought in paid for her/Bridgett’s elite education, her designer clothes (and get ready to hear a whole heckuva lot about Gucci). It wasn’t always wine and roses for Fannie; the bio part touches on how desperately impoverished she was and how through pluck and grit, she made a life for herself and for her children and neighbors.
But there’s only a brief smattering of that part of her mother because Bridgett wasn’t born then; the whole life she’s ever known is one of privilege and of having whatever she wants, whenever she wants. And if not? Well, then we hear a couple of diary entries where Bridgett is all peeved and angry with her mother.
The absolute, very WORST part comes at the end when Fannie is dying. Bridgett zips outta the country for a vacation rather than be there at least minimally for her mother. When Fannie pays for the entire family to go to Vegas one last time, Bridgett whines that she’s bored because her mother “spends a lot of the day sleeping,” which makes one want to scream, “Uhm, yeah! That’s because she’s ill and is, like, DYING!!!” Bridgett’s total self-absorption makes for some trying times, some difficult HOURS of listening.
I really mean it. What little we hear about Fannie sounds beyond interesting and wonderful.
One of these days, someone should write a book about her…!
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