Raceless

2021-02-23 Biography & Autobiography

Author : Georgina Lawton
Release : 2021-02-23
Genre : Biography & Autobiography
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 498/5 ( reviews)

GET EBOOK

Book Synopsis Raceless by : Georgina Lawton

Download or read book Raceless written by Georgina Lawton. This book was released on 2021-02-23. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Bustle Most Anticipated Debut of the Year From The Guardian’s Georgina Lawton, a moving examination of how racial identity is constructed—through the author’s own journey grappling with secrets and stereotypes, having been raised by white parents with no explanation as to why she looked black. Raised in sleepy English suburbia, Georgina Lawton was no stranger to homogeneity. Her parents were white; her friends were white; there was no reason for her to think she was any different. But over time her brown skin and dark, kinky hair frequently made her a target of prejudice. In Georgina’s insistently color-blind household, with no acknowledgement of her difference or access to black culture, she lacked the coordinates to make sense of who she was. It was only after her father’s death that Georgina began to unravel the truth about her parentage—and the racial identity that she had been denied. She fled from England and the turmoil of her home-life to live in black communities around the globe—the US, the UK, Nicaragua, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, and Morocco—and to explore her identity and what it meant to live in and navigate the world as a black woman. She spoke with psychologists, sociologists, experts in genetic testing, and other individuals whose experiences of racial identity have been fraught or questioned in the hopes of understanding how, exactly, we identify ourselves. Raceless is an exploration of a fundamental question: what constitutes our sense of self? Drawing on her personal experiences and the stories of others, Lawton grapples with difficult questions about love, shame, grief, and prejudice, and reveals the nuanced and emotional journey of forming one’s identity.

Raceless

2021-02-18 Biography & Autobiography

Author : Georgina Lawton
Release : 2021-02-18
Genre : Biography & Autobiography
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 36X/5 ( reviews)

GET EBOOK

Book Synopsis Raceless by : Georgina Lawton

Download or read book Raceless written by Georgina Lawton. This book was released on 2021-02-18. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A GUARDIAN, SUNDAY TIMES, EVENING STANDARD AND COSMOPOLITAN BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR 2021 'A jaw-dropping story, told deftly . . . a gripping, thought-provoking book' Sunday Times Georgina Lawton was born to two white parents. Despite her brown skin, her racial identity was never spoken of in her childhood home. The truth only began to emerge when her beloved father died. Fleeing the shattered pieces of her family life, Georgina went in search of answers - a search that took her around the world, to the DNA testing industry and to talk to others whose identities had been questioned or erased. How do you come to terms with a family history tangled in deceit? And how do you define yourself after a childhood that denied a crucial part of your identity? A beautifully-written true account of a young woman seeking her own story amid devastating family secrets. For readers of moving, powerful books about family and identity such as My Name is Why by Lemn Sissay and Educated by Tara Westover. ----------- 'Freshly fascinating . . . She writes beautifully about questions of identity and belonging, so central to each of us in finding our particular place in the world' New York Times Book Review 'Extraordinary' Daily Mail 'A poignant and eye-opening memoir' Yomi Adegoke, co-author of Slay in Your Lane 'A beautiful heart-expanding memoir, truly unforgettable' Emma Gannon, author of Sabotage 'At turns revelatory and profound, this memoir sings' Publishers Weekly 'A beautifully written account of an extraordinary story, as eye-opening as it is profound' Otegha Uwagba, author of Little Black Book

Antiracism in Cuba

2016-04-05 History

Author : Devyn Spence Benson
Release : 2016-04-05
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 73X/5 ( reviews)

GET EBOOK

Book Synopsis Antiracism in Cuba by : Devyn Spence Benson

Download or read book Antiracism in Cuba written by Devyn Spence Benson. This book was released on 2016-04-05. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analyzing the ideology and rhetoric around race in Cuba and south Florida during the early years of the Cuban revolution, Devyn Spence Benson argues that ideas, stereotypes, and discriminatory practices relating to racial difference persisted despite major efforts by the Cuban state to generate social equality. Drawing on Cuban and U.S. archival materials and face-to-face interviews, Benson examines 1960s government programs and campaigns against discrimination, showing how such programs frequently negated their efforts by reproducing racist images and idioms in revolutionary propaganda, cartoons, and school materials. Building on nineteenth-century discourses that imagined Cuba as a raceless space, revolutionary leaders embraced a narrow definition of blackness, often seeming to suggest that Afro-Cubans had to discard their blackness to join the revolution. This was and remains a false dichotomy for many Cubans of color, Benson demonstrates. While some Afro-Cubans agreed with the revolution's sentiments about racial transcendence--"not blacks, not whites, only Cubans--others found ways to use state rhetoric to demand additional reforms. Still others, finding a revolution that disavowed blackness unsettling and paternalistic, fought to insert black history and African culture into revolutionary nationalisms. Despite such efforts by Afro-Cubans and radical government-sponsored integration programs, racism has persisted throughout the revolution in subtle but lasting ways.

Uniting Blacks in a Raceless Nation

2016-05-12 Literary Criticism

Author : Miguel Arnedo-Gómez
Release : 2016-05-12
Genre : Literary Criticism
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 595/5 ( reviews)

GET EBOOK

Book Synopsis Uniting Blacks in a Raceless Nation by : Miguel Arnedo-Gómez

Download or read book Uniting Blacks in a Raceless Nation written by Miguel Arnedo-Gómez. This book was released on 2016-05-12. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cuban writer Nicolás Guillén has traditionally been considered a poet of mestizaje, a term that, whilst denoting racial mixture, also refers to a homogenizing nationalist discourse that proclaims the harmonious nature of Cuban identity. Yet, many aspects of Guillén’s work enhance black Cuban and Afro-Cuban identities. Miguel Arnedo-Gómez explores this paradox in Guillén’s pre-Cuban Revolution writings placing them alongside contemporaneous intellectual discourses that feigned adherence to the homogenizing ideology whilst upholding black interests. On the basis of links with these and other 1930s Cuban discourses, Arnedo-Gómez shows Guillén’s work to contain a message of black unity aimed at the black middle classes. Furthermore, against a tendency to seek a single authorial consciousness—be it mulatto or based on a North American construction of blackness—Guillén’s prose and poetry are also characterized as a struggle for a viable identity in a socio-culturally heterogeneous society.

Surviving the White Gaze

2021-02-02 Biography & Autobiography

Author : Rebecca Carroll
Release : 2021-02-02
Genre : Biography & Autobiography
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 552/5 ( reviews)

GET EBOOK

Book Synopsis Surviving the White Gaze by : Rebecca Carroll

Download or read book Surviving the White Gaze written by Rebecca Carroll. This book was released on 2021-02-02. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A stirring and powerful memoir from black cultural critic Rebecca Carroll recounting her painful struggle to overcome a completely white childhood in order to forge her identity as a black woman in America. Rebecca Carroll grew up the only black person in her rural New Hampshire town. Adopted at birth by artistic parents who believed in peace, love, and zero population growth, her early childhood was loving and idyllic—and yet she couldn’t articulate the deep sense of isolation she increasingly felt as she grew older. Everything changed when she met her birth mother, a young white woman, who consistently undermined Carroll’s sense of her blackness and self-esteem. Carroll’s childhood became harrowing, and her memoir explores the tension between the aching desire for her birth mother’s acceptance, the loyalty she feels toward her adoptive parents, and the search for her racial identity. As an adult, Carroll forged a path from city to city, struggling along the way with difficult boyfriends, depression, eating disorders, and excessive drinking. Ultimately, through the support of her chosen black family, she was able to heal. Intimate and illuminating, Surviving the White Gaze is a timely examination of racism and racial identity in America today, and an extraordinarily moving portrait of resilience.

Popular eBooks

Raceless

Raceless

Antiracism in Cuba

Uniting Blacks in a Raceless Nation

Surviving the White Gaze

You may also like...