Review: When I Was White: A Memoir

When I Was White: A Memoir by Sarah Valentine
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This memoir is fascinating to me. I have not experienced this myself but certainly have friends with biracial children or who are biracial themselves and have seen how that has affected them. I've always been interested in the questions surrounding why race is even an issue in the world, children don't make it an issue. They simply use it to describe each other the way one would use height or hair length or glasses or not to identify a friend to another person. But it has no additional implication expect as we age because it is a learned concept within society. So I can completely understand how a girl, who is shown nothing but love and support from her two white parents would assume that she is also white. Why wouldn’t she? Would a child question why their parents have one color hair or eyes and they have another? No. They accept that they are loved and cared for. I definitely think that the harder aspect of this memoir is the author’s experience of feeling lied to throughout her young life because of the information withheld from her about her natural father. I can empathize with her but also with her mother in this because no one knows the "right" thing to do in that situation and so they hopefully do their best. People aren't perfect and this certainly would be a difficult situation. Its really a fascinating reality though to suddenly have a different ethnicity than you believed you had and it made you feel differently about yourself or your background at first. It would be a lot to wrap you head around but like living both sides of a coin, seeing the truth of racial injustice and the good and the bad in people. But already knowing both sides. What insight it would give you. This actually will likely turn out to be a tremendous gift. With her ability as a writer, I see this author going far in advancing the dialogue of race relations for the better. And more power to her.
I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in a personal account of race in America. Well done.
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