This Leaves Me Okay

<p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Lucille Mama Ceal Hatch Eldridge wrote to her grandson Walter Pryor weekly for nearly 30 years from his boyhood until she died at 80. Most extraordinarily Mama Ceal was not a well-educated person having completed only the eighth grade. As a live-in maid raising other people's children she had little leisure time to write. Yet her letters sprinkled throughout </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>This Leaves Me Okay</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> (Heliotrope Books May 2025) helped Pryor profoundly to feel he mattered. His reflective memoir shares a local's perspective of the lesser-known rural Arkansas Black experience through his grandmother's story and interweaves well-known civil rights struggles that Pryor and his family recall. A CAO and General Counsel now at a financial institution that supports underserved communities Pryor shares the demoralization of knowing Mama Ceal's great-grandchildren must still grapple with too many race and equity challenges that she had to face. He asks and the story answers: how did this woman who was devalued in American society figure out how to make her small world better and stay hopeful for her family's future?</span></p><p></p><p></p>