Gayle Pemberton shares the accumulated revelations of a lifetime of observation in sixteen provocative autobiographical essays, interweaving her own history and that of her family with reflections on American literature, art, music, and film. Building on the tradition of such writers as W.E.B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, and Ralph Ellison, but with a wisdom and sharp wit uniquely her own, Pemberton moves from the integration of a transient hotel in Chicago to a party on that city's Gold Coast; from journeys by train and the memories they provoke to reflections on race aboard ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean; from the Mickey Mouse Club to the ghost of Emmett Till; from Harvard to Hollywood.

"A thinking woman's autobiography. An unusual and engaging work, consistently honest and constructive." -Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Smart, irreverent and righteously indignant. Pemberton has an eye for the absurd and a talent for expressing the ironies of growing up black in white America. The Hottest Water in Chicago chronicles the sting of racism and the survival of one family's spirit."-Essence