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Black, White and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self

Black, White and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self

List Price: $14.00
Your Price: $10.50
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Not-so-Benign Neglect
Review: I was stunned by this young woman's story, primarily because I've worshipped her mother, Alice Walker, for years and cannot comprehend how she could be so neglectful of her daughter! I couldn't stand the way she turned Rebecca into her own parent or "sister," instead of mothering her in the ways she needed. Especially ironic to me was that I'd just finished reading Alice Walker's previous novel, in which she writes about her desparate need for her own mother, who was often at work and unavailable to Alice. It appears that Alice Walker raised her daughter the way she herself was raised. How could the insightful, loving woman who comes through in her novels have been such a neglectful mother?

Rebecca's story is beautiful and heart-breaking. I wanted to reach out and take that little girl in my arms, to offer her the "container" and sense of belonging and acceptance she needed. I'm looking forward to more of her work, and I feel sure she's going to give her mother a run for her money!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: An interesting, fraught ambivalence
Review: Walker's insights regarding shifting identity vis a vis divorce and race are pungent, but they are not well highlighted by this meandering autobiography. Most memorable is Walker's blistering resentment of her Movement parents, who apparently conceived her as a political statement and then abandoned her to face the violence, ostracism and anguish of biracial, divorced childhood alone while they pursued their own careers. Alice Walker particularly comes off as a self-absorbed, irresponsible, narcissistic flake -- not surprising, considering the self-serving mushiness of her most recent novels. Rebecca Walker has an enormous job on her hands -- forging an identity and a career she can live on her own terms, accepting that her parents' self-absorbed sanctimoniousness prevents them from seeing her as a real person, instead of their project. She is certainly not the first or only gen-x adult to face such a situation. This reader wishes her luck, but wonders whether the book's public confessionalism is the best way to go.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: a unique story of pain, growth, and identity
Review: Like a painting by the African American artist, Kerry James Marshall, Rebecca Walker is multi-layered. The daughter of the novelist Alice Walker writes about her pain and struggle to find a place between her divorced parents vastly different worlds, black and white, Jewish and non-Jewish. Her mother, Alice Walker, is, of course, the famed African American author, while Rebecca's father is a Jewish lawyer, Mel Leventhal. (kind of similar to Lisa Jones, the daughter of Hetty Jones, the Jewish author, and Amiri Baraka, the African American poet.) . Her parents got married in Mississippi when interracial marriages were still illegal. Born in 1969, in a newly desegregated hospital in Jackson, Mississippi, she was a child and symbol of the civil rights movement. But when the marriage ended, what was her identity? (in contrast to being in an airport, where you have a definite identity and goal, that of passenger and destination) Each chapter is freshly written in the precocious voice of Rebecca at the age of her events, whether she be a preteen or an adult. Rebecca's writes of identity, a life in a divorced family, prejudice, and Jewish relatives who are wary of her (it's as if you aren't really part of the family, but there as part of an affirmative action program). But at the same time, reserved, she admits that she was unable to fully commit to either sides of the family. She writes of a boyfriend who doesn't think she is black enough, sexuality, drug abuse, teenage abortion, ballet prejudice, body form, how she loved to sneak off to the poorer sections of the Bronx from her father's home in Riverdale, how she was often thought of as the baby sitter for are light skinned step-siblings, or perceived as a bookish cracker by some of her black cousins, and other cutting edge topics. She writes about the feelings you experience when your blood ancestry doesn't claim you fully, and you have to create a new family and identity. A book to experience.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: yes, it's Alice's daughter
Review: In this beautifully written memoir, Rebecca Walker discusses what it was like to grow up with a black mother and Jewish father and feeling as if she were a part of neither world. She describes being taken to her father's new home for the first time after their divorce - she had been at her mother's house, her father explains to her, and now she is going to her father's house. She wonders which of these is HER house, a question that is a recurring theme of the book. She describes her pain at not having her own world and instead feeling out of place (either too black or not black enough) in each of her parents' worlds. My biggest complaint with the book is that we don't actually get to see much of the woman that the child grew into. The book ends rather abruptly with her high school graduation, so we don't get to see Rebecca nagivate her own place in the world, outside of her parents' homes and lives. She has accomplished a lot since graduating high school, so it would have been nice to have seen some of that. However, she is still a young woman, so i imagine that she is still becoming the woman that she will be, and still trying to find her own place in the world. Perhaps, then, this book was a little premature?

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Leave the writing to her mother
Review: Blah blah blah! Sorry, but I was expecting so much more. Maybe I went into this book with a larger expectation for Rebecca, but this is anything but an inspiring story but more of a multi cultural child whining that she had to move a lot. Welcome to the melting pot of America, Rebecca! Be grateful :) Besides the Americana references, dont bother with this one.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Delighted and Disappointed...
Review: While I was moved almost to the point of tears on several occasions upon reading Walker's novel, I was disappointed with the end. It seems Rebecca has yet to come to terms with her "Shifting self". Walker writes about how she was able to weave in and out of two radically different worlds (the world of her black mother and free-living San Francisco culture, to the world of the white upper middle class New York suburb Jewish culture). She explores the way in which she adapted almost completely to one or the other culture whenever it was needed or expected. However, rather than coming to terms with her rich bi-racial and colorful cultural background and integrating both of these into forming her own unique identity, in my opinion Rebecca chose one identity over the other. Legally changing her name and thus further suppressing her identity from any resemblance of her Jewish and white background deeply saddened me. Although difficult, there are ways of incorporating aspects of both identities into one self - despite the state of racial animosity we live under in this country, both her parents were clearly able to do so. It is clear that Rebecca felt a distinct resentment toward her father and the eventual life he chose to lead; however, as a Jewish American I could not help but feel disappointed that Rebecca chose to identify with one side of her oppressed bi-racial identity over the other. She describes the life of her father, stepmother, half siblings and the culture of Larchmont, NY as privileged, wealthy, racist and generally homogeneous. While all of this may very well be close to the truth, what about being Jewish? What about all of the baggage that goes along with being a religious minority, the legacy of the Holocaust, the anti-Semitism everywhere in this world - what about that struggle? Rebecca seems to clump the "white" experiences of her life into offensive stereotypes of Jewish summer camp, and generalized stereotypes of growing up in suburban NY. She remembers those experiences as so much more of an outsider than the "black" experiences she remembers. In response to a previous review, someone wrote, "the key for me in understanding is that she cannot and will not be contained by neat categories." I could not disagree more with this after finishing this book. Walker is almost all about neat categories particularly when it comes to her "whiteness". Rather than drawing on the unique and rich history and background of her Jewish white self - she tends to wrap that side of her up into neat stereotypes. If I were to analyze her "shifting self" based on reading this book, I would say that it is this process and denial that contributes to, if not causes her confusion as a bi-racial woman and the arduous struggle she recalls in forming and constructing her identity.

All of that said, I cannot help but love this book, as completely opposite as that sounds. Walker's writing is poetic, moving and draws the reader into a world that even if unfamiliar casts a spiritual light on the struggle of bi-racialism in America. I find myself wanting to know everything about Ms. Rebecca Walker after reading this, combing the internet for scraps of information about her life and what she has done since the writing of Black, White and Jewish. I highly recommend this book

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Unique perspective
Review: this book is a unique view of the world from a young persons perspective who in addition to the struggles of being an adolescent, this mixture is spiced with the familial racial/social and religious factions that aided the further disorientation of self. what it says is that 'it is not easy'. it is a challenge to be multidimensional in a world that wants desperately to be able to categorise and quantify you, as well as your thoughts.Rebecca Walker had experiences that mirror many of those felt by young girls and women growing up in America, yet had discrepancies that are not so common.The combination of these factors develops into a read that takes you inside the personal space of a single girl and a whole family with its divergent and sometimes contradictory egos.I am thankful for the chance to take a glance into the honest and challenging self.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Getting to know Rebecca Walker
Review: This a beautifully written novel on the life of a biracial, bicultural, young person. She personifies strength and individuality in a world that expects you to be black or white (or Jewish) with little room for gray... I was impressed with Ms Walker's writing skill and style and would definately recommend it. Enjoy.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Rebecca Walker's Writing Speaks to Reality
Review: Rebecca Walker's autobiography is a beautiful account of a sometimes painful trajectory. I read the book a few months after it was published, and it is still with me several years later. Adult children of divorce will identify with the split locations of having to develop multiple lives by maintaining relationships with now-separated parents. Walker describes this dilemma with brilliant agency. She is both observing the world around her and participating in its events. Walker also demonstrates the complex connections between circumstances imposed upon a person and those we develop through decisions. For example, although it was not possible to control the prejudiced attitudes of racists, it is possible to assert oneself, which Walker writes about poignantly. Also impressive is Walker's exploration of self, an evolving concept, but always cognizant of important values like honesty. Memorable scenes abound. Appropriating money for gifts to win approval from classmates as a young child. Talking back to a racist security guard. Exercising freedom of choice. Struggling to appreciate the self. These issues are very real, ones that will resonate with any person who has ever questioned the concept of identity. Walker teaches us about this question, be it through her insightful discussion of being a young, interracial child in 1969 in Mississippi, attempting to decipher the contradictory messages of extended family on both sides who sometimes allowed preexisting prejudice to presuppose cross-cultural acceptance, and demonstrating that it is possible to becoming a loving and nonviolent person. Walker is writing honestly about a continually evolving life. This book is for any person who has ever struggled with trying to better understand themselves and through self-understanding, become a more loving, peaceful person. This book is a message the world needs. It is ecology in a time of environmental disruption. Thank you, Rebecca. I look forward to your continued writing!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: INSIGHTFUL AND HONEST
Review: This was a story full of honest, uncensored introspection. As a fellow bi-racial American woman, I was completely able to relate to her experiences. Although her circumstances were unique, her inner struggles and identity issues resonated with me in a very real way. Not once while reading this book did I feel that something was being kept from me. Her truth was bracing and appreciated. Whatever her motives were for writing this book, she was able to sincerely touch and affect this reader. I would recommend this book to anyone who has ever struggled to find the essence of who they are, all the while pretending to already know.


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