Child is the story of Judy Goldman's relationship with Mattie Culp, the Black woman who worked for her family as a live-in maid and helped raise her—the unconscionable scaffolding on which the relationship was built and the deep love. It is also the story of Mattie's child, who was left behind to be raised by someone else. Judy, now eighty, cross-examines what it was to be a privileged white child in the Jim Crow South, how a bond can evolve in and out of step with a changing world, and whether we can ever tell the whole truth, even to ourselves. It is an incandescent book of small moments, heart-warming, heartbreaking, and, ultimately, inspiring.

"Steeped in vivid, evocative memories of her southern childhood, Goldman's moving memoir 're-inhabits' and 'interprets' the past: a white child growing up in a Black womn's care. It's a brave undertaking to explore the complexities of that era, but Goldman's wise, clear-eyed recognition of truth moves the memories into a new place."

-Jill McCorkle, author of Hieroglyphics

"Child is as profound a memoir as I've ever read. One gorgeously rendered scene after another. To read this riveting book is to learn how to hold the finest detail up to the light, how to examine all memory."

- Abigail DeWitt, author of News of Our Loved Ones

Judy Goldman is the author of seven books -- three memoirs, two novels, and two collections of poetry.