Promises to Keep: How Jackie Robinson Changed America

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism and death.

The book’s author, Sharon Robinson, is readers’ gateway to Jackie. As his daughter, she feels obligated to tell his story and spread the values that his legacy embodies. The title indicates her goal, and Chapter 1 states it: “Whether you commit to study hard, to be a better friend, family member, or neighbor, I hope that through my father’s example you will understand why making a promise and keeping it is so important” (7). Sharon wants to promote principled, selfless behavior, and her father provides a model that the readers can follow.

Sharon’s narrator’s voice mixes the subjective with the dispassionate. Breaking with the norms of a standard biography, she doesn’t refer to her subject by name but as “Dad” or “my father.” These titles remind readers that Sharon is Jackie’s daughter, so her relationship with him isn’t objective. At the same time, she refers to Jackie and to the US’s racial history in a blunt, straightforward tone, forgoing euphemism. When describing the origins of slavery, she writes, “People kidnapped from Africa are brought to the Virginia colony” (8).