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Loading... Self-Portrait in Black and White: Family, Fatherhood, and Rethinking Race (edition 2019)by Thomas Chatterton Williams (Author)
Work InformationSelf-Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race by Thomas Chatterton Williams
   Books Read in 2023 (602) No current Talk conversations about this book. Interesting thoughts and points on how we still cling to a specific race even if that may be a very small component of our natural heritage. Also shows up that there is a certain pugnacious glee in clinging to a previously victimized group and waving the victim banner as if in victory. I just wish the author hadn't sat at a lectern and read me his paper. I'd much rather have had some energy and emotion in his voice as well as a varying of pitch and tempo. A very robotic delivery which lessens the effect and immediacy of the information. (  ) Bookmarque | Jan 16, 2023 |  Really loved the book. A great writer with a background in philosophy speaks about race and racism, in very personal ways and also in a broad view of where we all are, where we have been, and where we might be able to go. I found it inspiring and I admire his bravery. (  ) steve02476 | Jan 3, 2023 | I received a free copy of this book to review. I don't believe that has biased my review or my rating. A contemplation, a memoir, but overall an indictment, of race -not racism, not race-because-people-think-race-is-real, but race itself- couched in and springing from William's having "white" (or able-to-pass, or Black, or ???) children. It may sound crazy to say it, here in late 2020, with Trump still in the running for a second term, with police shootings and Black Lives Matter firmly in the zeitgeist, with Twitter frenzies and blasts and counter-blasts from e.g. the NYT opinion pages about cancel culture, wokeness, White privilege, and all the rest... but, maybe the time is about to right for something like the message here. Not colorblindness, not Identity Uber Alles, not wokeness, not reaction, but a hard look at racism and race, and an imminently reasonable question (Williams puts it so much better): Why the fuck are we still doing race, indeed actively enforcing race on people (anywhere, but not least as part of "anti-racism"?) ( ) dcunning11235 | Apr 23, 2021 | I became interested in Williams' books after reading several pieces he wrote for periodicals. In one sense, this book is an extended reflection on the fate of his children, born to him a multiracial man identifying as black, and his white French wife. It is also a critique of the very concept of "race" and a soul-searching exploration of what his heritage means to Williams and to the wider world. This is a thought-provoking book, well thought out and elegantly written. ( ) nmele | Jun 29, 2020 | This gave me so very much to think about regarding the construct of race in America. I'm prone to marking up books to note things that strike me and then jotting those page numbers in the back of the book. The back flyleaf of this book is chock-a-block full with my notations. ( ) Phyllis.Mann | Mar 18, 2020 | no reviews | add a review
"A meditation on race and identity from one of our most provocative cultural critics. A reckoning with the way we choose to see and define ourselves, Self-Portrait in Black and White is the searching story of one American family's multigenerational transformation from what is called black to what is assumed to be white. Thomas Chatterton Williams, the son of a 'black' father from the segregated South and a 'white' mother from the West, spent his whole life believing the dictum that a single drop of 'black blood' makes a person black. This was so fundamental to his self-conception that he'd never rigorously reflected on its foundations -- but the shock of his experience as the black father of two extremely white-looking children led him to question these long-held convictions. 'It is not that I have come to believe that I am no longer black or that my daughter is white,' Williams writes. 'It is that these categories cannot adequately capture either of us.' Beautifully written and bound to upset received opinions on race, Self-Portrait in Black and White is an urgent work for our time"-- No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)305.800973 — Social sciences Social Sciences Groups of people Ethnic and national groups ; racism, multiculturalism General Biography And History North America United StatesLC ClassificationRatingAverage: (4.34)
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