{"id":12410,"date":"2011-03-01T23:22:08","date_gmt":"2011-03-01T23:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=12410"},"modified":"2015-11-26T15:51:54","modified_gmt":"2015-11-26T15:51:54","slug":"beyond-the-whiteness-of-whiteness-memoir-of-a-white-mother-of-black-sons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=12410","title":{"rendered":"Beyond The Whiteness of Whiteness: Memoir of a White Mother of Black Sons"},"content":{"rendered":"

Beyond The Whiteness of Whiteness: Memoir of a White Mother of Black Sons<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Duke University Press
\n<\/a>1996
\n198 pages
\nCloth: ISBN: 978-0-8223-1826-2
\nPaperback ISBN: 978-0-8223-2044-9<\/p>\n

Jane Lazarre<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI am Black,\u201d Jane Lazarre\u2019s son tells her. \u201cI have a Jewish mother, but I am not \u2018biracial.\u2019 That term is meaningless to me.\u201d She understands, she says\u2014but he tells her, gently, that he doesn\u2019t think so, that she can\u2019t understand this completely because she is white. Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness<\/em> is Jane Lazarre\u2019s memoir of coming to terms with this painful truth, of learning to look into the nature of whiteness in a way that passionately informs the connections between herself and her family. A moving account of life in a biracial family, this book is a powerful meditation on motherhood and racism in America, the story of an education into the realities of African American culture.<\/p>\n

Lazarre has spent over twenty-five years living in a Black American family, married to an African American man, birthing and raising two sons. A teacher of African American literature, she has been influenced by an autobiographical tradition that is characterized by a speaking out against racism and a grounding of that expression in one\u2019s own experience\u2014an overlapping of the stories of one\u2019s own life and the world. Like the stories of that tradition, Lazarre\u2019s is a recovery of memories that come together in this book with a new sense of meaning. From a crucial moment in which consciousness is transformed, to recalling and accepting the nature and realities of whiteness, each step describes an aspect of her internal and intellectual journey. Recalling events that opened her eyes to her sons\u2019 and husband\u2019s experience as Black Americans\u2014an operation, turned into a horrific nightmare by a doctor\u2019s unconscious racism or the jarring truths brought home by a visit to an exhibit on slavery at the Richmond Museum of the Confederacy\u2014or her own revealing missteps, Lazarre describes a movement from silence to voice, to a commitment to action, and to an appreciation of the value of a fluid, even ambiguous, identity. It is a coming of age that permits a final retelling of family history and family reunion.<\/p>\n

With her skill as a novelist and her experience as a teacher, Jane Lazarre has crafted a narrative as compelling as it is telling. It eloquently describes the author\u2019s delight at being accepted into her husband\u2019s family and attests to the power of motherhood. And as personal as this story is, it is a remarkably incisive account of how perceptions of racial difference lie at the heart of the history and culture of America.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Beyond The Whiteness of Whiteness: Memoir of a White Mother of Black Sons Duke University Press 1996 198 pages Cloth: ISBN: 978-0-8223-1826-2 Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8223-2044-9 Jane Lazarre \u201cI am Black,\u201d Jane Lazarre\u2019s son tells her. \u201cI have a Jewish mother, but I am not \u2018biracial.\u2019 That term is meaningless to me.\u201d She understands, she says\u2014but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[395,11,414,8,17,20,25],"tags":[302,5559],"class_list":["post-12410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-autobiography","category-books","category-family","category-media-archive","category-monographs","category-usa","category-women","tag-duke-university-press","tag-jane-lazarre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12410"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44228,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12410\/revisions\/44228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}