Life Beyond Measure
I’ve just finished reading my first book in a year! For the last year I have been encaptivated and excited in a child like trance by comics and graphic novel that I’ve come to love and yearn to dive deeper into a world of geekdom.
However a half price sale and Six Degrees Of Separation led to my purchase of Life Beyond Measure by Sidney Poitier. A recollection of tales and life stories such as your grand father (or great grandfather in this case) would have told you as a child in the form of extended letters to his first great grandchild.
The book tells the tale of a young Sidney and his first few years wild and free in Cat Island in the Bahamas where he grew up before travelling to Nasau and getting into lots of trouble which eventually prompted his father to send him to Miami to live with his brother. Whilst it only loosely covers his life as an actor it comes across more as moral guidance to his great granddaughter for her future years when he may not be around. However, and what is so thoroughly warming about the book, he never comes across as arrogant only sage and wise befitting of his years.
Topics that Sidney talks about include love, romance, married life, death, the afterlife, god, science, culture, racism, family life, careers. What still is especially moving is his recollection of his involvement in the Civil Rights Movement during the 1950’s and 1960’s.
I thoroughly recommend this book if you are like Sidney’s films and want to learn more about him as a family man or even if you don’t.