Racism Explained to My Daughter »

Winner of the 2004 IMPAC Prize, the 1994 Prix Maghreb, and the 1987 Prix Goncourt, Moroccan-born Tahar Ben Jelloun emigrated to France in 1961. His novels include the Prix Goncourt-winning The Sacred Night, Corruption, and This Blinding Absence of Light (IMPAC Prize, 2004). He is a regular contributor to Le Monde, La Repubblica, El País, and Panorama. Carol Volk translated Ben Jelloun's novel Corruption. She lives in Washington, D.C.

The prize-winning book of advice about racism from the bestselling author to his daughter, introduced by Bill Cosby.

When Tahar Ben Jelloun took his ten-year-old daughter to a street protest against anti-immigration laws in Paris, she asked question after question: "What is racism? What is an immigrant? What is discrimination?"

Out of their frank discussion comes this book, an international bestseller translated into twenty languages. Ben Jelloun has created a unique and compelling dialogue in which he explains difficult concepts from ghettos and genocide to slavery and anti-Semitism in language we can all understand, and adds an all-new chapter for this edition. Also included are personal essays from four prizewinning writers and educators who themselves are parents: Patricia Williams, David Mura, William Ayers, and Lisa D. Delpit.

Elegant and sensitive, and available now for the first time in paperback, Racism Explained to My Daughter is for all parents and educators who have struggled to engage their children in discussions of this complex issue. Winner of the 1998 United Nations Global Tolerance Award and the 2000 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award.

Library Journal

If its success in Europe is any indication, this book should be a best seller in America. Attempting to explain racism is challenging enough, and it is even harder when one is explaining it to a child. Prize-winning author Ben Jelloun (Corruption, New Pr., 1995) meets the challenge, as Bill Cosby acknowledges in his introduction. Written in question-and-answer format--his daughter's questions, Ben Jelloun's answers--the book is appropriately brief. The author does not consider his words final, and so the four responses, from William Ayers, Lisa Delpit, David Mura, and Patricia Williams, parents and writers all, are important in continuing the discussion and applying it to the American scene. The book is easy to read and provocative, touching on discrimination, religion, genetics, stereotyping, immigration, xenophobia, and more. Rare should be the library that does not have it.--John Moryl, Yeshiva Univ. Lib., New York Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.