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Sto caricando le informazioni... Color Blind: A Memoirdi Precious Williams
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Iscriviti per consentire a LibraryThing di scoprire se ti piacerà questo libro. Attualmente non vi sono conversazioni su questo libro. Precious Anita Williams is placed into an unorthodox foster care situation at just 10 weeks old. Her biological mother is a well-to-do Nigerian woman working in London who, seemingly, has no interest in raising her own daughter. Instead, she leaves her in the care of a couple in their fifties who live in an all white suburb of London. Anita is subsequently sexually molested, belittled, raped, and completely isolated from her African culture. The story of how she overcomes these obstacles to become a successful woman is nothing short of remarkable. However, while the story is riveting, the writing falls a bit flat. As a result, one fails to connect emotionally with the characters, thus rendering the book a bit dull overall. Precious Williams is practically born into foster care. It's at ten weeks old that she's brought to Mrs. Taylor whom she'll call Nanny. Meanwhile, Precious Anita Williams will be known as "Nin" in reverence of Nanny's beloved literary character, Topsy who is described as a pickaninny in Uncle Tom's Cabin. This sentiment adds to the propriety of this seemingly loosely regulated and trendy practice She's placed with Nanny by her Nigerian mother via an ad in a publication specifically for arranging foster care. The practice was often done between the birth parents and the foster family while the former attended school in England. These arrangements were typically between African parents and white foster parents. Precious' mother however, is not a student and is descended from Nigerian royalty. She simply doesn't want to be a mother. Yet, she maintains this inconsistent presence in her daughter's life for most of her childhood. Her complaints that Precious is "dull" and the taunting of schoolmates about her being "coloured" leave Precious floating aimlessly between two worlds. One world sees her as Nigerian though she has no connection with this side of herself and the other world is the one she lives in surrounded by white caretakers and school children. She feels thoroughly British but longs to have a sense of blackness. Color Blind is a fascinating, though often heartbreaking, memoir of a girl navigating race in that she not only wants to find her identity as a person of color, but also who she is beyond the color of her skin.
Gorgeously written with a fiercely honest voice, “Color Blind,’’ shows that who we are is shaped by how we are nurtured....Williams will grow up to forge her own identity as Precious, “the writer, the grown woman, the adventuress.’’ How she gets there is a serpentine road that’s as shatteringly moving as it is incredible. “Williams offers an English journalist's wry, charming memoir of being a black Nigerian girl growing up in a 1970s white foster home in a village of West Sussex, England…. Her beautifully wrought memoir reaches back deeply and generously to regain the preciousness she felt lost to her.” Precious Mettle Precious Williams’ memoir, Color Blind (Bloomsbury), recounts how this London-born daughter of a Nigerian princess came to be raised by an elderly white woman in an English housing project. Growing up, she struggled with race and class issues, being renamed Anita, and getting raped. “Anita is the elephant in the room,” Williams declares, while “Precious…[is] the writer, the grown woman, the adventurer.” “An affecting memoir about growing up in two worlds, neither quite comfortable with the other… the story moves along toward a satisfying conclusion that speaks to aspiration and desire. Well done.”
Where are you from?' is a question I always find hard to answer. 1971- an ad in Nursery World. 'Private foster parents required for a three-month-old baby' - me. The lucky applicants are a 57-year-old white woman and her daughter, who love babies, especially black babies. My mother arrives, a haughty Nigerian woman in a convertible with a moses basket on the seat beside her, setting the net curtains in this all-white council estate twitching. And though the whole place makes my privileged mother's skin crawl, she returns to London with an empty basket beside her, choosing this home for me because, unusually for the estate, my foster mother talks proper, and I'll need a posh white accent for the bright future I have ahead of me. I'll cling on to that idea - that I've a bright future ahead of me - even though there's nothing in my upbringing to warrant it. Even though my mother's love consists of long absences, confusing behaviour and dauntingly high expectations. Even though my foster mother's love is overwhelming and suffocating. Even though I seem to be a magnet for abusive sexual attention from men I barely know. Even though the authorities have no idea where to put me or where I belong, and nor, really, do I. And even when I fall pregnant at eighteen and find myself back in the rural town I'd tried to escape from, with a tiny baby dependent on me, I still think the future's out there. I'll find it, whatever it takes. Precious is the story of growing up black in a white community, of struggling to find an identity that fits amid conflicting messages, of deciphering a childhood full of secrets and dysfunction. Painfully honest, swerving from farce to tragedy, Precious has a spirit that refuses to be crushed. Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
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Even though she was given up to a foster home as a baby by a mother who apparently couldn't be bothered with a child, unless it was convenient for her, Precious spend most of her life looking for love and acceptance from her mother. This book was at times very disturbing to read, I can't even imagine what it would have been like to live this life.
The author did survive this life and has gone on to become a journalist. More information about all of her achievements can be found at the author's website. http://www.preciouswilliams.com/
I read a ton of biographies when I was growing up and have gotten away from them. I have not read one for quite awhile. This is a genre that I need to rediscover. Reading about other people and what they have gone through makes me appreciate the life that I have and reminds me how strong human nature can be, when it means one's survival. ( )