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Growing up in Connecticut in the 1940s and 1950s, the daughter of a prominent black Baptist minister, Shirlee Taylor Haizlip enjoyed a position of privilege and security in her identity that for many years she took for granted. For her mother, Margaret, and the rest of the Morris family, fair skin had been a double-edged legacy, a contrast to the Reverend Taylor's dark, proud, and successful clan. Light enough to "pass," Margaret's father and surviving siblings, descendants of an Irish immigrant and a mulatto slave, had disappeared into the white world, abandoning her and cutting themselves off from their tangled roots. Shirlee grew to adulthood moving easily between the black world and the white, but with an unfulfilled dream of discovering what had become of her mother's family. As Margaret approached eighty, her daughter determined to realize that dream. What she unearthed in dusty archives, letters, journals, and other records, is a tale of journeys - physical, emotional, racial, and social - that continues even today. Across the boundaries of race and time, the story spans six generations of both sides of Shirlee's family, ranging form Ireland, North Carolina, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., to Connecticut, New York, Ohio, the Virgin Islands, and finally California. There, with the help of a private detective, Shirlee tracked down her mother's only surviving sibling and reunited two sisters - one who called herself white and the other who called herself blackafter seventy-six years. She also uncovered a history of desertion, redemption, and betrayal set in motions by the charged, complicated meaning that color has carried in our society. The different choices the members of her multihued family made, and the different lives each of them led as a result, raise questions of identity and allegiance common to us all.… (altro)
This is a very well-written memoir (subtitled "A Family Memoir in Black and White") about a woman's search for the missing half of her mother's family---the half that made the decision to "pass" as white and left her "too dark" mother behind as a child. It explores the question of defining race, and what our roots really mean, in the context of a thoroughly fascinating story with a satisfying and hopeful outcome. Interesting counterpoint to the fictional tragedies of Faulkner's Joe Christmas and Charles Bon. Reviewed in November, 2007 ( )
Absolutely one of my most favorite books of all time. It is fascinating and will inspire anyone to search their roots, no matter what their racial heritage is. In my opinion, it should be one of the "required reading" books in every high school. ( )
I first read this book back in 1994 and am very surprised to see it is in so few of Library Thing members' personal libraries. It sheds a sharp light on many aspects of this nation's racial history and on family relationships. It is well worth a read. ( )
I loved this book for the way it calmly revealed an African American family's dealing with the overwhelming racism of American society. The author's mother had been abandoned by her family in 1916 because she wasn't white enough to "pass" with the rest of the family. Hizlip tracks down the relatives, one by one, and provides pictures that vividly illustrate her research. Long before Black Power or African heritage pride took their place in the United States, Haizlip's family's solution was a common one, and the history she gives is fascinating. (Review by Nan, Bell, Librarian, Ithaca High School)
Meticulously researched (with an excellent bibliography), intricate (the family tree is, at times, necessary to disentangle the relationships) and above all passionate, this book is easy to read. Its passion sometimes becomes anger and that conveys its own important message about the African-American experience. I found it both sad and ironic however that within the space of a few pages, Haizlip first affirms her belief in her father's story of an encounter with a ghost and then expresses her disbelief in a family tradition that a helpful (white) supervisor advised her uncle that he should move to another city and pass as white, because he'd never advance beyond the position of janitor while living as a coloured person. The kindness of a concerned white individual is more incredible than supernatural visitations. This is also something that white Americans need to know. Haizlip asks herself if she is also a racist, pondering her compulsion to enforce a sort of Jim Crow among her family pictures, with the white family separated from the black relatives. Speaking as a person who doesn't sort the family photos by skin colour, I'd say she probably is. But this book left me wondering where my own unsuspected racism may be found. ( )
Dati dalle informazioni generali inglesi.Modifica per tradurlo nella tua lingua.
To
my mother, who made the journey;
my sisters, who followed her path;
my daughters, who know the way;
my grandfather, who gathered the books;
my father, who read all the pages;
my brother, who skipped some of the chapters;
my husband, who understood all the stories.
Incipit
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"Sometimes I look at people and wonder if they are related to me."
Citazioni
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"I often ...wonder whether I am a racist because black people are at the center of my comfort zone. Or are my feelings the result of a wound that is slow to heal? Am I a racist when I think about all the evil and violent things 'they' have done to 'us'? Am I not 'them' as well as 'us'? Or am I carrying the flag from one generation of color to the next to warn of the hatreds that separate the light-skinned from the dark? Will my semaphore be understood?"
Ultime parole
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"And Lucy, that ancient roup of fossil bones found in Africa, is the mother of us all."
Growing up in Connecticut in the 1940s and 1950s, the daughter of a prominent black Baptist minister, Shirlee Taylor Haizlip enjoyed a position of privilege and security in her identity that for many years she took for granted. For her mother, Margaret, and the rest of the Morris family, fair skin had been a double-edged legacy, a contrast to the Reverend Taylor's dark, proud, and successful clan. Light enough to "pass," Margaret's father and surviving siblings, descendants of an Irish immigrant and a mulatto slave, had disappeared into the white world, abandoning her and cutting themselves off from their tangled roots. Shirlee grew to adulthood moving easily between the black world and the white, but with an unfulfilled dream of discovering what had become of her mother's family. As Margaret approached eighty, her daughter determined to realize that dream. What she unearthed in dusty archives, letters, journals, and other records, is a tale of journeys - physical, emotional, racial, and social - that continues even today. Across the boundaries of race and time, the story spans six generations of both sides of Shirlee's family, ranging form Ireland, North Carolina, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., to Connecticut, New York, Ohio, the Virgin Islands, and finally California. There, with the help of a private detective, Shirlee tracked down her mother's only surviving sibling and reunited two sisters - one who called herself white and the other who called herself blackafter seventy-six years. She also uncovered a history of desertion, redemption, and betrayal set in motions by the charged, complicated meaning that color has carried in our society. The different choices the members of her multihued family made, and the different lives each of them led as a result, raise questions of identity and allegiance common to us all.
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Reviewed in November, 2007 (