“This Leaves Me Okay” with Walter Pryor and Stacey Abrams

Pryor and Adams will discuss “This Leaves Me Okay,” a reflective memoir that explores the lesser-known Arkansas Black rural experience through the eyes of a grandson as he reflects upon the life of his grandmother. Lucille “Mama Ceal” Hatch Eldridge wrote to her grandson Walter Pryor weekly for nearly 30 years, from his boyhood until she died at 80. As a live-in maid, raising other people’s children, she had little leisure time to write. Yet, her letters, sprinkled throughout “This Leaves Me Okay,” helped Pryor profoundly to feel he mattered. Pryor weaves his grandmother’s stories in with the societal struggles she and others encountered.