Category: Autobiography

  • Had my name been Jessie Mendoza, then people might have asked, “What are you?” Not because I look ethnically ambiguous, but precisely because I don’t; I am absolutely white-passing.

  • As Valentine endeavors to explore what her new identity means to her, she searches for ways to connect to her blackness. For Valentine, learning that she is black is to reject whiteness; she cannot comprehend how the privileges of whiteness can be held hand in hand with the racism the black body is subject to.

  • A black woman who lived her formative years identifying as white, Sarah’s story is a kind of Rachel Dolezal in reverse, though her “passing” was less intentional than conspiracy. This memoir is an examination of the cost of being black in America, and how one woman threw off the racial identity she’d grown up with,…

  • Based on the soul-searching memoir by Scots Makar Jackie Kay, adapted by Tanika Gupta, and directed by Dawn Walton.

  • Though Noah is not a trained sociologist, he uses the complexity and absurdity of his life to tease out numerous sociological concepts. Throughout his odyssey, he places issues of race and identity at the forefront. The most salient question is what does it mean to be born a problem?

  • “water/tongue” is a critical read for anyone interested in the long effects of gendered and cultural violence, and the power of speech to forge new and empowering directions.

  • I’ve spent thousands of dollars trying to turn my hair into anything but what it is: black and curly

  • Being biracial in America, for me, is being able to see things from two entirely different perspectives.

  • Charting parallels between childhood and motherhood by Lou Mensah.

  • The uneasy existence of being black and passing for white.