Mixed Race Studies

An Intimate Look at Race: Growing Up Biracial in a Racially Torn World

Wellesley Centers for Women
Book Reading \ Panel \ Conversation with Author Sil Lai Abrams
Clapp Library, Lecture Room
Wellesley College
106 Central Street
Wellesley, Massachusetts
Tuesday, 2016-10-25, 16:30-17:00 EST (Local Time)

Presenters: Author Sil Lai Abrams with Linda Charmaraman, Ph.D., Layli Maparyan, Ph.D., Linda M. Williams, Ph.D.

For more information, click here.

Memoir Uncovers One Woman’s Painful Search for Racial Identity

NBC News
2016-09-08

Brooke Obie

When award-winning journalist Sil-Lai Abrams finally sat down to write her memoir, she hoped to stick to her 8-month contract. Instead, it took Abrams 3.5 years to dive into the pain of her upbringing and emerge ready to tell her story in full in “Black Lotus: A Woman’s Search for Racial Identity” (Gallery Books/Karen Hunter Publishing, August 2016).

Born to a Chinese immigrant mother and a white American father in Hawaii in 1970, Abrams was raised as a white child. When school children in her Seminole County, Florida hometown would taunt her because of her brown skin and loose curly hair, with “nigger” and “porch monkey,” she took refuge in what her father had taught her: She had such tanned skin because she was born in Hawaii. It didn’t make sense to her, even as a young child, but in a world where Blackness was inferior, she clung to her father’s “Hawaiian” explanation with both hands.

She would be nearly 14 years old before her father would snatch the privilege of whiteness from her fingers. By this time, her mother had abandoned her, her father, and her two fair-skinned, straight haired younger siblings, and Abrams wrestled with self-worth as a result…

Read the entire article here.

Sil Lai Abrams Blooms in Blackness

Los Angeles Review of Books
2016-08-31

Brooke Obie

Sil Lai Abrams, Black Lotus: A Woman’s Search for Racial Identity (New York: Gallery Books, 2016)

SIL LAI ABRAMS HAD HER SUSPICIONS about her race as a very young child. Her brown skin was much darker and her hair much curlier than her fair-skinned, straight-haired younger sister and brother. When she would walk down the street with her Chinese mother and White father, her White neighbors would stare and whisper.

“Your skin is brown because you were born in Hawaii,” her father would tell her anytime she asked, assuring her of her legitimacy as his own White child. It became her retort when she was met with “porch monkey” and other racist slurs by children at her majority-White school: “I’m Hawaiian!” she assured them, not Black.

The same father who raised her in Whiteness would strip her of that safety net of privilege when she was 14 years old. After Sil Lai laughs at racist jokes with her younger sister May Lai, one of which is how to “stop a nigger from jumping on the bed” — par for the course in her Seminole County, Florida, neighborhood — her father came into the room, appearing disgusted, only to say, “I don’t know why you’re laughing, Sil Lai. You’re one.”…

Read the entire review here.

Black Lotus: A Woman’s Search for Racial Identity

Gallery Books (an Imprint of Simon & Schuster)
August 2016
368 pages
Hardcover ISBN: 9781451688467
eBook ISBN: 9781451688481

Sil Lai Abrams

The unique and beautifully written story of one multiracial woman’s journey of acceptance and identity that tackles the fraught topic of race in America.

Sil Lai Abrams always knew she was different, with darker skin and curlier hair than her siblings. But when the man who she thought was her dad told her the truth—that her father was actually black—her whole world was turned upside down.

Raised primarily in the Caucasian community of Winter Park, Florida, Abrams was forced to re-examine who she really was and struggle with her Caucasian, African American, and Chinese identities. In her remarkable memoir, she shares this journey and how it speaks to a larger question: Why does race matter?

Black Lotus is a story of acceptance and identity but it is also a dialogue on the complex topic of race in this country by an award-winning writer and inspirational speaker.

In ‘Black Lotus,’ Author Sil Lai Abrams Explores Search For Racial Identity

Here & Now
WBUR 90.9 FM, Boston, Massachusetts
2016-08-03

Sil Lai Abrams, author of “Black Lotus: A Woman’s Search for Racial Identity.” (Courtesy of Che Williams)

When Sil Lai Abrams was a child, her white father and her Chinese mother explained her dark skin and curly hair were a result of her Hawaiian birthplace. But when she was 14, her father told her that her biological father was a black man.

Abrams struggled for years to figure out just who she was, and tells her story in the new memoir “Black Lotus: A Woman’s Search for Racial Identity.” Abrams joins Here & Now’s Eric Westervelt to talk about the book…

Listen to the interview here. Read an excerpt from the book here.

Your Blackness Isn’t Like Mine: Colorism And Oppression Olympics

The Huffington Post
2016-06-28

Sil Lai Abrams

Monday night, actor and activist Jesse Williams gave a powerful speech at the BET Awards upon receiving the Humanitarian Award, during which he spoke eloquently, passionately, and dare I say — even lovingly to the audience of millions. I have seen hundreds of awards show acceptance speeches and Williams was the first Black man I witnessed stand up and acknowledge the sacrifices of Black women on this type of platform. In fact, through this speech he acknowledged damn near everyone, from “activists,” to “the civil rights attorneys, the struggling parents, the families the teachers, the students, that are realizing that systems built to divide and impoverish us cannot stand if we do.” He called out the names of those who have been killed by the police and railed against cultural appropriation and exploitation by White media corporations.

Williams’ speech was profound and emblematic of what it means to be “truly woke,” yet for some it wasn’t enough. While many tweeted their adoration for his message, there was a vocal group of people expressing their frustration that Williams — a light-skinned, biracial Black man, was being given center stage as “the face” for the Black Lives Matter movement. While criticizing his appearance, they conveniently ignored that there are plenty of prominent Black folks with darker complexions who haven’t said a damn thing their entire lives about social justice, stars with platforms even bigger than Williams…

Read the entire article here.