The Black Girl Next Door is the story of an apparently successful black family who moves into tony Palos Verdes Estates (not just plain old Palos Verdes) in Southern California to be greeted by ugly graffiti on their house, and various inept rather than mean comments at the local elementary school where the girls are [...]
Posts Tagged as ‘race’
December 5, 2008
The Professor’s Daugher by Emily Raboteau
The Professor’s Daughter reminded me, in the form of a novel, of One Drop, the memoir of the daughter of a black man and a white woman. The daughter here, Emma, is clearly informed of her black father’s race, but the dads’ careers are similar: first in the family to go to college, followed by recognition as [...]
November 19, 2008
Bombay Anna by Susan Morgan
Bombay Anna, as its subtitle says, is the biography of the woman who was the model for The King and Igoverness. Not being familiar with the musical, I read the book as simply the adventures of a most interesting woman of the late 19th and early 20thcentury, born poor in an Indian/English family and who reinvented [...]
November 12, 2008
One Drop by Bliss Broyard
One Drop is the memoir of the daughter of a man who chose to pass as white for his entire adult life and who raised her in complete ignorance of her racial background (although his wife, her mother, knew about it.) As a young adult, she learns of her father’s race as he is dying and [...]
