Black White and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self » (Reprint)

Rebecca Walker was educated at Yale and has appeared in numerous anthologies and periodicals including The New York Times Magazine, Vibe, and Spin. She is the founder of the national nonprofit organization, Third Wave Direct Action Corporation.

Black, White, and Jewish is the story of a child's unique struggle for identity and home when nothing in her world told her who she was or where she belonged. Poetic reflections on memory, time, and identity punctuate this gritty exploration of race and sexuality. Rebecca Walker has taken up the lineage of her mother, Alice, whose last name she chose to carry, and has written a lucid and inventive memoir that marks the launch of a major new literary talent.

Black Issues Book Review - Asha Bandele

I have to admit that when I first eyed the title of Walker's memoir a measurable amount of suspicion lurked in my heart. I worried that upon reading it, I would find myself entangled in a wishy-washy, whiny diatribe that avoided a meaningful political or social center. So many books, films and other forms of media that purport to add something urgent to the discussion on race in America, woefully fall short or just plain fail. This book is not one of them.

Walker has written, in blunt, stunning and intelligent language, a vital story about what it meant to come of age in two worlds that existed, largely, in diametric opposition. Here, she makes it clear that she is an author with her own necessary and brilliant voice. Early on she writes, "I am not a bastard, the product of rape, the child of some white devil. I am a Movement Child. My parents tell me I can do anything I put my mind to, that I can be anything I want.I am not tragic."

Throughout the book, the honesty with which Walker confronts her confusion, her loves, her desires, her sexuality and her anger, makes the reader want to turn away, lest she be accused of spying, or worse, uncover pieces of her own self. That's what happened to me. Reading this book, I was forced to recall my own childhood in which a white world was imposed on me vis-à-vis private schools, summer camps and dance classes.

Black, White & Jewish is a virtual road map-a guide through the complexities of race and childhood. This is a book ready-made for the great canon of women's literature that rejects silence and surface analyses and tells the truth, whether or not we want to hear it.