Description: "Eyes Have Seen: From Mississippi to Montreal is a memoir about embracing the racial and tyrannical crosswinds of Hattiesburg and the south of the 1960's and riding the tailwinds of SNCC, civil rights, anti-Vietnam War activism and reimagining the underground railroad to Canada"--
Review Quotes:
FINALIST for the FOREWORD INDIES PRIZE FOR AUTOBIOGRAPHY MEMOIR
"The captivating story of Fred Anderson, aka Clifford Gaston, is rooted in the African-American traditions of the American South. These traditions, whether mystical, familial or political, inform a meandering journey that took him from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, to Montreal, Quebec. . . . Eyes have seen is a fascinating read that leaves you awed and inspired." --Aly Ndiaye, aka Webster, Historian and Rapper
"Fred Anderson's story is a gripping tale that maps the terrain of Black family and exile at a moment of a certain Black becoming. The Civil Rights Movement and Black Power continue to reverberate for all of us and Anderson's intimate account of his experience through the movement and exile to Canada is not just one of triumph but a reckoning with a past that is not yet behind us. Anderson's memoir is a guide to what we must now live too." --Rinaldo Walcott, Professor and Chair of Africana and American Studies at the University at Buffalo, and author of The Long Emancipation: Moving Toward Black Freedom. "Fred Anderson's Eyes Have Seen is a masterpiece. It is brilliant, erudite storytelling in well-limned, at times, lyrical, cinematic prose. These days, as the USA endeavours to lie about its white supremacist legacy, this memoir is a searing reminder of Jim Crow and its cost: in lives, in property, psychological terror, and even exile, for those who endured or fought it. The latter half of the memoir, which depicts Anderson's life as a Vietnam-War draft resister in Montreal, is an invaluable contribution to history." --H. Nigel Thomas, author of A Different Hurricane and many other novels "[W]onderful and gripping life odyssey . . . Anderson's recollections, stitched together like his grandmother's patchwork quilts, contribute to an all-too-often erased Afro-American and Afro-Canadian heritage. (. . .) Eyes Have Seen can be viewed as a contribution to alternative or counter-history, a crucial perspective that challenges dominant narratives and illuminates forgotten truths." --Léa Murat-Ingles, Montreal Review of Books"Fred Anderson's memoir will absorb Mississippians on multiple levels . . . Anderson's experience explains watershed North American 20th-century history through the eyes and ears of a Mississippi native." --Jay Wiener
"Anderson is a superb literary craftsman and his book Eyes Have Seen ranks high among those written by others who've recorded the highs and lows of the Black experience in North America. The good times, the bad, and the times worse than bad." --Ishmael Reed, CounterPunch