{"id":58695,"date":"2019-08-17T01:27:05","date_gmt":"2019-08-17T01:27:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=58695"},"modified":"2019-08-17T01:27:05","modified_gmt":"2019-08-17T01:27:05","slug":"when-i-was-white-sarah-valentines-memoir-considers-the-meaning-of-racial-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=58695","title":{"rendered":"‘When I Was White\u2019: Sarah Valentine\u2019s memoir considers the meaning of racial identity"},"content":{"rendered":"

‘When I Was White\u2019: Sarah Valentine\u2019s memoir considers the meaning of racial identity<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Chicago Tribune<\/a>
\n2019-08-14<\/p>\n

Julia M. Klein<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"'When<\/a>
\nSarah Valentine\u2019s<\/a> intriguing memoir, “When I Was White<\/a>,” considers the meaning of racial identity. (St. Martin’s)<\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

\u201cFor a long time,\u201d Sarah Valentine<\/a> writes, \u201cI felt like a bundle of fragments, and I wanted to be whole. I wanted to be able to write a family history that answered all my questions and filled in all the blanks, but all I got were different versions of the past and an incomplete, unfulfilling present.\u201d<\/p>\n

This revelatory admission comes near the close of Valentine\u2019s intriguing, if never entirely satisfying, memoir, \u201cWhen I Was White<\/a>.\u201d But it could well have served as its opening \u2014 a warning to readers that neither a slick solution to the puzzle of racial identity nor a definitive unraveling of the specific mystery of Valentine\u2019s origins would be forthcoming.<\/p>\n

A former visiting assistant professor of creative writing at Northwestern University, Valentine grew up in Pittsburgh\u2019s North Hills suburbs<\/a>, the bright, athletic, dark-hued child of two white parents. To many observers, she was self-evidently of mixed racial heritage. But her family regarded her as simply their (white) daughter \u2014 so much so that when black classmates asked her out, her mother cautioned her against \u201cinterracial\u201d dating…<\/p>\n

Read the entire review here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cFor a long time,\u201d Sarah Valentine writes, \u201cI felt like a bundle of fragments, and I wanted to be whole. I wanted to be able to write a family history that answered all my questions and filled in all the blanks, but all I got were different versions of the past and an incomplete, unfulfilling present.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,395,5,8,6462,20],"tags":[2805,5597,20378,11554],"class_list":["post-58695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-autobiography","category-book-reviews","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-chicago-tribune","tag-julia-m-klein","tag-sarah-valentine","tag-the-chicago-tribune"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58695","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=58695"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58697,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58695\/revisions\/58697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}