Author of
The World According to Fannie Davis (Little, Brown, 2019)
Bridgett M. Davis is the author of the memoir, The World According To Fannie Davis: My Mother’s Life In The Detroit Numbers. She is also the author of two novels, Into the Go-Slow (Feminist Press, 2014) and Shifting Through Neutral (Amistad, 2004). As a professor at CUNY’s Baruch College, she teaches creative, film and narrative writing, and directs the Sidney Harman Writer-in-Residence Program. She is co-founder and curator for Words@Weeksville, a monthly reading series held at Weeksville Heritage Center in Central Brooklyn. She is also writer/director of the award-winning feature film Naked Acts.
Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Millions, Salon, O, The Oprah Magazine, Women’s Review of Books, The Root and LitHub. A native of Detroit, she’s a graduate of Spelman College and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. She lives in Brooklyn, NY with her family.
Bridgett M. Davis
Books by Bridgett
The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother’s Life in the Detroit Numbers is Bridgett Davis’ story of growing up in Detroit in the 1960s and 70s while keeping a huge family secret: the fact that the business her mom ran – the one that brought the family out of poverty and into the middle class – was illegal. Bridgett’s mom, Fannie Mai Drumwright Davis Robinson, was a numbers runner, one of only two women in Detroit to successfully run her own Numbers business; this is a story that has never been told.
As a successful adult, Bridgett found herself still burdened by the weight of that family secret: it meant she could never tell the truth about how extraordinary her mother actually was, that she couldn’t fully answer her children’s questions, or publicly celebrate the fact that her mother, in an era when there were almost no opportunities for African-American women, “made a way out of no way” and managed to not only be a stay-at-home mom to her five children, but ensure that Bridgett got the education and the financial security to grow up to be a journalist, a teacher, a writer and a filmmaker–and a homeowner. She felt the time had come to share her story with the larger world.
Seamlessly weaving together personal history, memoir, interviews and cultural study, The World According to Fanny Davis illuminates the life and life-choices of one unforgettable and unconventional woman, while opening a rare and invaluable window on The Numbers – how it worked, and its significance as a means of African-American economic empowerment, not just for one family but in the culture at large, and offering a rare, insider, African-American perspective on Detroit in its heyday. The World According to Fanny Davis is a moving and unforgettable memoir of an extraordinary parent, living in a unique time and place, as seen through the eyes of an admiring yet clear-sighted daughter. This is a memoir that, while revealing the secrets, triumphs and tragedies of one unique family, also shines a light on underrepresented aspects of the American experience.
"The World According to Fannie Davis is a daughter's gesture of loving defiance, an act of reclamation, an absorbing portrait of her mother in full. Blending memoir and social history, [Davis] recounts her mother's extraordinary story alongside the larger context of Motor City's rise and fall."―Jennifer Szalai, New York Times
"Davis's heartwarming memoir honors her remarkable mother, who made a good life for her family in the '60s and '70s."―New York Times, Editor's Choice
"A rich and heartwarming memoir honors a remarkable mother....We need more stories like Fannie's-the triumph and good life of a lucky black woman in a deeply corrupt world."―New York Times Book Review
"The novelist and teacher illuminates the life of her iron-willed mother, who in the 1960s and '70s spearheaded
Detroit's shadow economy (through an illegal lottery known as "The Numbers") in order to bolster both her family and the city's burgeoning black middle class."―O,Oprah Magazine Reading Room
"The author candidly and poignantly transports readers to her formative years in Detroit, where her mother, Fannie, successfully ran numbers-- right from the family's dining room table-- with class, determination and dignity to spare."―Bridgette Bartlett Royall, Essence Magazine
"The book blends memoir with the compelling social history of the numbers, a lottery game that operated outside of the law but very much inside the context of African-American life and culture."―Kate Tuttle, The Boston Globe
"The story of Fannie Davis, as her daughter so thoroughly tells it, is the story of not just one woman, in one city, at one period in time; it is, in many ways, the story of black America, the resilience and solidarity of the marginalized."―Entertainment Weekly
"Novelist Bridgett M. Davis turned to nonfiction in what started out as the story of her mother...But this memoir turned out to be much more: a panorama of African-American communities in this era, the resolve they demonstrated and the restrictions put upon them in their pursuit of the American dream. It's a family story of nationwide scale."―David Canfield, Entertainment Weekly
"Bridgett M. Davis draws a loving portrait of her unforgettable mother who gamed the system and won. Davis is a witness to the journey of the African American strivers of Detroit, but she is also a witness to the evolution of her own remarkable family history. Combining rigorous research with an insider's access, The World According To Fannie Davis is a triumphant tale of female empowerment. Bridgett Davis' love letter to her mother lights a bold new path, because sometimes leaning in is not enough."―Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage