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    The Color of Love
    The Color of Love
    The Color of Love
    Audiobook8 hours

    The Color of Love

    Written by Gene Cheek

    Narrated by Gene Cheek

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Nine years after Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, and only a year before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a judge in the Forsyth County Courthouse of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, wrenched twelve-year-old Gene Cheek from the security of his mother's devotion. Here is a true story of love in a time afflicted by hatred, ignorance, and racism. At its core, this is a frank account of a love affair between a white woman and a black man that took mother from son and split a family forever.

    In the early 1960s, the city of Winston-Salem struggled under the strict edicts of segregation, setting the tone of division that would plague Gene Cheek's life. Raised by his alcoholic father and his earnestly loving mother, Gene learned about the power of hatred and the strength of love. Yet when his mother falls in love with Cornelius Tucker, an African-American man, and becomes pregnant with his child, their union is seen as morally and lawfully unfit, forcing the family to choose between the infant and Gene. From a distance of more than forty years, Gene Cheek recounts a life of constant struggle with his biological father. Briefly that tension dissolved with the warm guidance of Cornelius Tucker--but that would soon end.

    The Color of Love is Gene Cheek's story told in his singularly honest voice. Its sincerity and truth resonate with a plea for tolerance, and the irrevocable nature of the decisions and emotions of modern life.


    This is a powerful story of love and forgiveness in the context of racial hatred during a tumultuous time in the South. Vanessa Bush American Library Association.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAscent Audio
    Release dateOct 15, 2006
    ISBN9781596591110
    The Color of Love

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    Reviews for The Color of Love

    4.5/5

    127 ratings21 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Incredible and compelling story. Alcoholism and racism effected Gene’s life. A self admitted blue collar son of the south who tells a story of survival and love.

      3 people found this helpful

    • 5/5
      This is a very loving, sad, heart touching story. I commend the author for sharing his truth and showing first hand that love does conquer evil.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Very moving and heartbreaking life story of healing and forgiveness.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Excellent read!!! This is a very special book about an extremely strong boy/man and the love he has for his mother. Love your neighbor as yourself and do good to those that sin against you...just about impossible to do but by God's grace.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Thank you for sharing you story, I had a family that lived in the next block from where I lived in the mid 1960's in Richmond Virginia, the Mother was white and Father was Black and behind bars . They had a beautiful son who we played with day to day. One day they disappeared. My Mother took them in and helped them get settled in the neighborhood. I often wonder about that family.
      Thanks,
      Morales

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Made me cry. Really honest and opened my eyes into how crazy things used to be.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Such a deeply moving insight into a personal journey! Thank you so much for sharing your story, how I wish, especially for you and you mother, that our judicial system could have been blindfolded for real, as it is depicted to be! Skin color would not have mattered, only what was truly best for that little boy! You have my admiration, in spite of all the hurt dealt out to you, your Grandmother’s and Mother’s love and influence on your life, allowed forgiveness!
    • 5/5
      I usually pause and have to come back on alot of the audio books I listen to, but this one I kept continuing to listen to in one setting. I was so drawn in by the narrator and felt his anger and cheered for him when he spoke up and was aware of what was right and wrong. I cried like a baby i was filled with such different emotions and will probably every time i listen to it
    • 5/5
      Looking through the author's eyes, I experienced childhood in a dysfunctional family in the same racially conflicted era as me. The grief of lost expectations when family broke down and resulting in altered life. Finding the bones...we (I) need to forgive to move past the pain.
    • 5/5
      Words can not Express how much I enjoyed this book. I laughed, cried and was so moved by this family's story.
    • 5/5
      It is a great book and gives insight into racism. It is evil and hurts everyone.
    • 5/5
      ...there is so much light shining in this book than the darkness that Gene endured and the racial bigotry that still stands today
    • 5/5
      This book is hard to rate. Insomuch as it stirred respect for good, anger for injustice, and sadness for the child caught in the middle, it deserves 5 stars. It's a 5 star book in its rawness and fairness. It was what someone lived and they kept on breathing. Somehow, after that, an attempt to judge style and literary quality seemed irrelevant.
    • 5/5
      Real good book speak history and knowledge so much went on back in the day
    • 5/5
      This is a powerful and heartbreaking story. It is precisely the kind that needs to be told, because we apparently need to be reminded that the decisions/rules we make as a society have real lives on the other end. Real human beings with hopes and dreams and fears and emotions.
      We need to hear these stories so we never ever allow it to happen again.
    • 5/5
      I honestly could not stop listening for HOURS!
      Thank you Gene Cheek for sharing your life. It is difficult to believe that these laws that prohibited interracial marriage and relationships were in my lifetime.
    • 5/5
      Hard story to tell but he did a beautiful job telling it.
    • 5/5
      I applaud the author’s first work...of grappling with the complex world of his youth. How moving his story is.
    • 4/5
      One I of the best book I read in a long time ! Wow what a story thank you for being sharing such a painful story
    • 3/5
      This book is a tragic and saddening life story that one wouldn't wish on their enemy. I grieved as I read this haunting tale of "a Mother's choice" that nearly cost her everything. I hope this book brings the author the internal peace that evil-spirited and bigoted human beings stole from him.
    • 2/5
      This book should have been better. I heard Cheek interviewed on NPR and the interview was really interesting and was my incentive to read the book. But it turned out to be another memoir by a kid, now adult, who was raised by an evil alcoholic father. How many of these kids can do memoirs? They're always the same. Okay, okay, so I know alcoholic fathers are evil and beat their wives and their kids and nothing good comes of that. The race piece was the interesting piece and made it worth finishing. Most interesting was the afterward, when Cheek told us his mother actually knew the court case was about custody.