Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.

Start by marking “Black White and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self” as Want to Read:

Other editions

Enlarge cover

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Open Preview

Black White and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self

by Rebecca Walker (Goodreads Author)

3.73 of 5 stars 3.73 · rating details · 2,041 ratings · 159 reviews

On October 3, 1993, a band of U.S. soldiers embarked on a mission in Somalia to capture two warlords. It was a simple plan. What erupted instead was a night of bloodshed and death. It became the longest sustained firefight involving American troops since the Vietnam War. This is the extraordinary minute-by-minute account of that courageous, historic, and brutal night.

Hardcover , 322 pages

Published January 31st 2001 by Turtleback Books (first published 2000)

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

Or buy for

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about Black White and Jewish , please sign up .

Be the first to ask a question about Black White and Jewish

Lists with This Book

This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Add this book to your favorite list »

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 3,000)

filter | sort : default (?) | rating details

Jul 30, 2008 Danika rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I read Black, White & Jewish while I was in high school. It was one of the single most important autobiographies I read during that period. At the time, I felt like the only mixed kid on the block and was going through severe identity issues. Black, White & Jewish has one simple message: you are the architect of your own identity.

I'm not sure how much I agree with that statement now, but it is a cornerstone of the way I reflect upon myself and how I choose to live.

flag 7 likes · Like · see review

Sep 30, 2008 Erin rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: bookclub

Easy read, but I fixated on the fact that her parents didn't parent instead of the point of view of the book in explaining how hard it was being black, white and jewish and not fitting in with extended family or groups of friends. In fact, the majority of the read I was infuriated with the parents and couldn't get over it.

I also heard that Alice Walker, her mother, stopped talking to her after this book was published. If I'd been her mother and read this account I think I would have felt I need ...more

flag 6 likes · Like · see review

Dec 21, 2008 Laura Avellaneda-Cruz rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

Provides (beautifully narrated) insight into:
-why girls use sex to get attention and affection and fill painful little gaps in their lives
-some challenges that mixed race youth may face
-what happens to children of neglectful, in attentive parents
-the effects on youth of parents who do not embrace all of their identities and attempt to impose identities on them

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Sep 01, 2008 Catherine rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fp , 2008 , nonwhite_us , judaism

I liked the beginning of this book less than I'd hoped to, and the end much more than the beginning led me to believe I would. Confusing, perhaps.

After reading Walker's Baby Love , and the record of her relationship with her mother falling apart so spectacularly, I wanted to read the book that was - for Alice - a large part of the cause. In the end, the Alice here is not the dragon I had expected to read about. She's withdrawn and self-controlled and there are glimpses of her depression, but she I liked the beginning of this book less than I'd hoped to, and the end much more than the beginning led me to believe I would. Confusing, perhaps.

After reading Walker's Baby Love , and the record of her relationship with her mother falling apart so spectacularly, I wanted to read the book that was - for Alice - a large part of the cause. In the end, the Alice here is not the dragon I had expected to read about. She's withdrawn and self-controlled and there are glimpses of her depression, but she seems cold only when provoked by outsiders who are racist jerks. I wonder if what Alice objected to was the lack of meaningful talk about her work - a work that, in Rebecca's autobiography, is simply 'out there', being done, requiring book tours from time to time; not something explored or necessarily valued. But then I'm not sure that any child necessarily would understand what writer is, was, and can be?

The beginning of the book is so painfully self conscious about its literary worth that it was hard to gain traction with the story for the beautifully - painfully - careful construction of every phrase. There's a large gap between that prose and the childhood Rebecca describes, a dissonance I couldn't quite bridge. By the end of the book, the language matches the person described, and I felt more comfortable, invited in, sympathetic. Whether that was simply a result of feeling at home with the book, or the style, or the new subjects introduced, I can't exactly say. But the end is definitely worth the rest of the read.

I wish there'd been more analysis, more stepping back, more adult Rebecca present in the early chapters where she looked back on her life. I wanted her to tell her what Judaism really meant in her family, how her family honored being black, and there are glimpses of this, but nothing long and engaging. Again, this may be a question of me analyzing the book she didn't write rather than the one she did - especially as the end is avowedly analytical. I'm glad I read this, but feel left with no more real understanding of Rebecca's experience of being black, white, and Jewish than when I began. ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Aug 15, 2008 Carolyn rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Everybody has a childhood issue that has to be dealt with during adulthood. Walker's birth symbolized the ideal of blacks and whites (and Jewish in this case) embracing in a segregated America at the height of the civil rights movement. Alas, dreams are usually much sweeter than reality, which Walker makes abundantly clear. After her parents' divorce when Walker was just a few years old, she was shuffled between them for two years at a time. It is this tension, between the permissive parenting o ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Oct 20, 2008 Leslie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Interesting…this was not nearly as much about being “Black White and Jewish” as being parented by parents lacking parenting skills. I wanted to shake the begeezes out of both her mother and father for the ridiculous set up of living in New York (or its suburbs) for two years then San Francisco and then back again. That’s just poor, no common sense parenting from two intelligent people.

The amount of sex Rebecca engaged in, especially in middle school, horrified me. It’s just plain scary because ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Mar 11, 2008 Chaz rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Ekkkk- this memoir was a required reading for my graduate social diversity class and was a complete failure and waste of time. Since the majority of reviews have been female --here's my take as a male--stay far away!

O.K book -- for coming of age adolescent girl. I found it to be a overly melodramatic, perfumed exposition of a upper-middle-class brat who pities herself while boasting about her numerous sexual relationships and experiences from the age of 12 on.

To read a page and a half about her ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Jun 29, 2010 Rachel rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: summer-10

Black White & Jewish is a compilation of compulsively readable memoirs by Rebecca Walker, who happens to be Alice Walker's daughter. I call them "memoirs" rather than autobiography because the author makes many stylistic choices which, astute though they may be, definitely mar the chronological format. The chapters are also artistically brief, sometimes mere vignettes, divided once again by theme. This singular style, compounded with Walker's direct but moving prose, is what makes her story ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Dec 27, 2008 Ciara rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommends it for: mixed race kids, teenagers, parents of mixed race kids, people who like good memoirs

Shelves: autobio-memoir , feminist-y-books , radical-non-fiction , read-in-2007

rebecca walker is the only child of a white jewish father (a prestigious civil rights lawyer, though damned if i can remember his name) & a black mother (author alice walker, who wrote the color purple , possessing the secret of joy ), etc. this is her memoir of growing up mixed race & trying to navigate the two different cultural worlds she inherited upon her parents' divorce. i don't know what to say about this book besides, "it was really, really good & you should read it." i mean, ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Apr 04, 2011 Zack rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A quick, engaging read, Walker covers the terrain of her fascinating, if troubled childhood, split between multiple homes, schools and identities. Simultaneously, she paints a rich portrait of the different layers to American culture in the 1970s and 80s. As a child of divorce whose parents took two-year turns with her in different cities and then on separate coasts, she was often left to her own devices and had access to many different communities, of which she never felt quite a part. Walker h ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Apr 13, 2013 Jessica rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The focus of this important memoir is to convey the fullness of Walker’s experience as a bi-racial female from childhood to adolescence. The memoir stands as testament to the social construction of gender and race. (The sociologist in me loves this.) Walker must assume distinct dialects, body language postures, and pop cultural tastes depending on whether she is in San Francisco with her mother, the African-American acclaimed author, or in Jewish suburban towns of New York with her father, a civ The focus of this important memoir is to convey the fullness of Walker’s experience as a bi-racial female from childhood to adolescence. The memoir stands as testament to the social construction of gender and race. (The sociologist in me loves this.) Walker must assume distinct dialects, body language postures, and pop cultural tastes depending on whether she is in San Francisco with her mother, the African-American acclaimed author, or in Jewish suburban towns of New York with her father, a civil rights attorney. The real question of the book seems to be: what is the tension between the truth of personal identity and the human sense of belonging in the various racial and socio-economic landscapes of this country?

The memoir is written primarily in present tense, which gives it a meditative and impressionistic quality. By beginning the memoir saying how her memory is not as complete as she likes, Walker sets up the reader’s expectations for a more fragmented, kaleidoscopic narrative. Time mostly follows the chronology of an autobiography, her memories from childhood through college. But toward the end, the reader becomes aware of Walker’s present-day moment from which she writes the memoir. She is an adult now, co-parenting a child with her love, and teaching. On occasion, Walker does jump back and forth in time within one chapter or from one chapter to another within a section. Sometimes this provides a timeless quality to the narrative. At other times, I was a little bit confused because it was difficult for me to follow a flashback within a present-tense moment without going into past tense.

A theme Walker develops that I appreciate is the impact her identity had on her sexuality, or perhaps, vice versa. Her physical encounters with men and women, the intimacy both sexual and psychic in a variety of contexts were, in fact, anchors. I identify with the idea that when membership to a pre-determined identity or community seems elusive and slippery, it is the private and personal encounters, often wordless, that can provide temporary relief from an unmoored life.

Her worlds are in many ways, worlds that I know or recognize. For me, it was Jewish youth group and Hebrew School through tenth grade. While she writes little about Yale, I feel a sense of kinship and can imagine her trying to navigate the dining hall in Commons and the parties at the Af-Am house or La Casa. I also know that my first sense of membership to a community of color was with the other scholarship students at my private high school in Riverdale (where Walker also lived): girls from Co-op City, or Harlem, or Morningside Heights before it was gentrified. There were only two other Asians in my class, so it was the “black crowd” that I hung with, learning the wop, listening to Al B Sure and the Jungle Brothers, and swapping stories about how sometimes people slowed their speech and o-ver-en-un-ci-a-ted when they spoke to us.

I wonder how Walker sees those experiences today. I am interested to know if the feelings and issues of the memoir still resonate or if now they have assumed a different shape in her life. But the answers to those questions do not necessarily fit the scope of this work. They are my own curiosities.

This memoir’s purpose was to fully represent the experience of mixed identity with all its complexities – especially to those who have the luxury of a seemingly seamless identity. Walker certainly accomplishes this. I am so grateful she wrote it and memorialized that particular experience, given that the world continues, sadly, to privilege a different narrative.
...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jan 11, 2012 Dayspring rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: gender-sexuality-feminism , family , memoirs , parenting , race-and-ethnicity , young-adult

I read this book for several reasons. First, I heard an interview with Rebecca Walker about a year ago and was captivated by her story. I love a good memoir, particularly one that deals with identity development. I fully admit that my second reason for reading the book was that it was written by Alice Walker's daughter. I am not familiar with Rebecca Walker's work as a feminist and writer, but my respect for her mother was enough to draw me in.

It took a few chapters for me to ease into Walker's ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Aug 04, 2009 Amy rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The book is "autobiography of a shifting self," Walker was born in the 60's with a black mother and white, Jewish father. Her writing is vibrant with imagery and conversational and random dialogue. Walker writes about her life based on finding identity through a world of symbolic interactionism. She discusses her experiences from toddler to college years, through transitions of different cities, trying to find a purpose in a time where people were inquisitive of interracial children.

I recommend ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Aug 07, 2008 Michi rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommends it for: biracial women and those who have to live with us!

Recommended to Michi by: a women's studies prof

When your racialized personhood is ambiguous, everything you do is scrutinized for others to categorize you, based on who you fuck, how you dress, the lightness/darkness of your skin, your language, your name, your class. This book brought back all the painful moments of adolescence in which all my friends were finding out who they were, and I always felt like I was finding out who I wasn't; that all the suburban Clinton-era propaganda about what it is to be a child in diverse America was a grea ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Apr 07, 2014 Peggy Walt added it

Not sure how I feel about this book - parts are very compelling and Rebecca Walker (daughter of author Alice Walker) had anything but a normal upbringing - in fact she kind of brought herself up, which often made me very sad. How her parents could think it was a good idea to spend two years with one in New York, then two with the other in San Francisco is a bit of an unexplained mystery. While this book is very much about her experience and her coming to terms with who she is, there is so little ...more

flag Like · see review

Jan 29, 2014 Dana Nucera rated it 4 of 5 stars

What an interesting autobiography. I very much enjoyed the author's writing style. She just wrote her thoughts down, randomly and cohesively. She weaved a very good thread of life as she lead it. It wasn't the usual timeline of events, etc. She wrote from the heart and you really got a feeling of what was going on in her head. She did very well at explaining what it means 'to identify' with yourself, when yourself is not so cut and dry. It was definitely a story of what exactly it feels like to ...more

flag Like · see review

May 12, 2015 L.A. rated it 3 of 5 stars

Walker, who is Alice Walker's daughter, was conceived of as a "movement child," a kid her white father and black mother hoped would help usher in a new era of cooperation. Obviously, that is not how it worked out. Moving from place to place, sometimes living with black relatives, sometimes white/Jewish, and occasionally both, Walker talks frankly about what it's like growing up biracial in America, being forced to negotiate multiple identities, and still deal with all the other coming-of-age stu ...more

flag Like · see review

Sep 20, 2014 Wanda rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"How sad," is the only coherent thought I have right now, five minutes after completing the book. She was given so much and so little all at once. Perhaps after my shocked, projecting soul has had time to process what I have read I can be more specific.

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jan 29, 2015 loafingcactus rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2015 , biography

I did not enjoy this book at all. I don't think there is anything wrong with it, but I'm not really into descriptive narrative (I rarely read fiction, for example) and this book is unbroken descriptive narrative, AND written in the present tense. It's what people would call autobiography rather than memoir - it's descriptive, not reflective.

I see that other commentators in similar situations as the author have found it useful, and I can see how that could be the case. And, as I said, I have no a ...more

flag Like · see review

Oct 10, 2007 Sarah rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: memoir

I have no sympathy for Rebecca Walker. She manipulates the system, embraces the different pieces of her identity when it serves her to do so, dismisses and trash talks them when they're not going to work to her benefit. Ugh.

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jan 25, 2015 SunnyD rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: bio-autobio-memoir , book-club_wms

where were her mama's people to tell her that this was not for publishing? eeek. really bad. she did not inherit alice's talents.

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jan 07, 2014 Paige rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This memoir by Alice Walker's daughter, Rebecca Walker, was truly amazing. Walker's experiences of what it feels like to not fit in, to feel not totally a part of one thing or another--one race or another--and to have her identity always be in question is so very relatable, even for non-mixed/Jewish readers. Her writing is real and raw and her style is straightforward, yet poetic. Her words were so inspiring and brought up so many memories and emotions that I spontaneously wrote a lengthy essay ...more

flag Like · see review

Oct 19, 2010 Callie rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Half way through this memoir, I started to get tired of it. All right, all ready I get it. You didn't fit in anywhere. And nobody watched over you, so you did a lot of dumb things, like having sex way too young, and experimenting with drugs. Some memoirs are able to transcend what happened to the writer and make it mean something to the rest of us, I didn't think this one did that. It was more just scene after scene of Rebecca and her friends getting into trouble and Rebecca not fitting in. She ...more

flag Like · see review

Mar 17, 2010 Amy Keyishian rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Ech, I don't know what to think. I'm not so naive as to expect novelist Alice Walker to be a perfect person, but her daughter's tale of being left alone as an early teenager for days and even weeks at a time, eating fast food and schtupping for comfort, made me want to tear my hair out. On the other hand, there were amazing benefits to her upbringing -- an amazing private high school, jobs and internships that were surely easier for her to access given her mom's reputation -- that she comes off Ech, I don't know what to think. I'm not so naive as to expect novelist Alice Walker to be a perfect person, but her daughter's tale of being left alone as an early teenager for days and even weeks at a time, eating fast food and schtupping for comfort, made me want to tear my hair out. On the other hand, there were amazing benefits to her upbringing -- an amazing private high school, jobs and internships that were surely easier for her to access given her mom's reputation -- that she comes off as a little ungrateful, as well.

I want to like her, but she keeps making it difficult for me. She never quite gives herself to her story; her style of writing is episodic, minimalist, and she picks up little pieces of story, blurts them out without preamble or followup, and then moves on to the next subject. She storms out of her father's home, choosing to live with her mother. But given the benefit of years, how does she feel about it now? Does she have more sympathy for him and for the stepmother who was clearly dear to her at certain points -- or is she still estranged? She talks about an obsessive relationship with a boyfriend in high school, describing how they flew between LA and SF every weekend, and then just drops the thread -- after declaring that her teachers saved her life that year, I'm left wondering: what did they do? Did the boyfriend get schmucky?

The woman needs an editor who can stand up to her! My sense is that she wrote this book and said "publish it as is, dammit. I won't have my voice compromised," and because her mom is Alice Walker, someone did. And she seems entirely blind to this possibility.

I'm set to read her next memoir, about motherhood, and friends already tell me I'll run up against the same problems. Ah well. At least this one was full of San Francisco scenes I found familiar and fun to read. ...more

flag Like · see review

Aug 30, 2010 Libby Unwin rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'm almost done, and honestly, looking at the finish line. It quit being interesting about 100 pages ago, but I'm too stubborn to put it down without finishing.

I think what frustrates me the most is I don't feel like I ever know where she is, or anything about the people she's with. Not a lot of character development, except for her own person and her parents (who are awful, and I'm truly sorry for that). Her friends, her boyfriends -- no idea. There's not much navigational data in the book, and ...more

flag Like · see review

Mar 29, 2012 Mychael rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Overall, pretty good, I thought she kind of overdramatized her "not fitting anywhere" more often than she actually gave us instances where she really came to a crossroads or parsing out of the different cultures that influenced her identity. It was pretty only two formulation, 1)"I was in a room, and there were black people there too, and I thought about how much I didn't fit." Or 2) "I was in a room, and there were white people there, and I thought about how much I didn't fit." Which is a momen Overall, pretty good, I thought she kind of overdramatized her "not fitting anywhere" more often than she actually gave us instances where she really came to a crossroads or parsing out of the different cultures that influenced her identity. It was pretty only two formulation, 1)"I was in a room, and there were black people there too, and I thought about how much I didn't fit." Or 2) "I was in a room, and there were white people there, and I thought about how much I didn't fit." Which is a moment for self-reflection, but not using this same situation over and over. There was a good amount of sex (not overly sexual the way some reviewers talk about it, and I am only speaking about it because others have), and the only off putting thing about the sex is how young she was when it happens and how many times she lied about her age seemingly in order to get sex or companionship. She seems to be making an underlying claim that these bad decisions are a result of bad or a lack of parenting, but the fact that she repeatedly lied about her age shows some fault of her own. That being said, the parenting in the book was pretty atrocious, but fairly common place is you were to ask me. Based on other reviews, I thought something truly horrible was going to happen, but it seem like merely the result of divorce when divorce wasn't as common. Perhaps she deserves our understanding in that there wouldn've been many counterparts to grapple with the life of being a child in a divorce. In this way, it is true, that her life is bifurcated, but the attempt at claiming a tri-fold with white, black, and Jewish does not ring true in terms is what is presented on the page. It is mostly just black and white, which is a story as old as time. The concept of being Jewish (and perhaps my interests is only piqued because I just finished Cornell West's Race Matters where he had a whole chapter dedicated to the black and Jewish relations) is almost wholly unspoken of. Although certainly aware of the binary, and most assuredly taught to push back against binary formulations, Ms. Walker falls victim to it in her reflections on being Black, White, and kinda Jewish. ...more

flag Like · see review

Aug 07, 2015 Lily rated it 4 of 5 stars

This was beautifully written. The daughter of Alice Walker and Jewish civil rights lawyer Mel Leventhal, Rebecca Walker detailed her incredibly painful and isolated childhood shuttling from coast to coast, city to city, dealing with divorce and her dual identity as both black and Jewish. Her childhood really was upsetting. The constant moving meant she had to keep making new friends, which forced her to be completely adaptable, switching from stereotypically black to stereotypically suburban to ...more

flag Like · see review

Aug 07, 2013 Alex rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I expected an intriguing analysis of identity from this memoir - something I could identify with despite being white and Protestant. I did find several pages with beautiful words on identity and personality and individualism within community.

What I mostly found instead was a coming-of-age story of highly detailed sex, drugs, alcohol, numerous lovers of both genders, "friends" and enemies of all ages, and a lot of cursing. Walker does not provide commentary or evaluation regarding her life choice I expected an intriguing analysis of identity from this memoir - something I could identify with despite being white and Protestant. I did find several pages with beautiful words on identity and personality and individualism within community.

What I mostly found instead was a coming-of-age story of highly detailed sex, drugs, alcohol, numerous lovers of both genders, "friends" and enemies of all ages, and a lot of cursing. Walker does not provide commentary or evaluation regarding her life choices, she simply states them as fact before moving on to a sketch of a conversation she had in which someone asked about being both white and black. The sketches were not frequent enough to establish a struggle between white and black identity. More often than not, I felt the struggle was between east coast and west coast, wealthy and poor, mother and father. Since my parents are divorced and remarried, I definitely understood that struggle, and that was my one point of identification value.

[Some Spoilers Below]

At the end of the book, when it is clear that Walker has chosen (view spoiler) , my heart broke. I already knew this, seeing as how I had looked into who Walker is today before reading the book, but I had felt so strongly that Walker could have been a much different person had she chosen the other path.

Don't get me wrong, Walker has made advances in society through her writing and speaking that seem very good. But I was expecting a woman of character and gentle resilience who has found herself, regardless of her ethnic background, to shine forth from this memoir. Instead, Walker's closing paragraphs read: (view spoiler) And I feel like I have gotten nowhere in this journey of self-identification.["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]> ...more

flag Like · see review

Mar 29, 2014 Super Amanda rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: paul-robeson

This book is fabulous. One of the few memoirs that accurately gives the reader an idea of what the Bay Areaa was like before the dotcoms and staggering wealth appeared, irrevocably altering the landscape of the real Bay Area forever. It is interesting that so many readers who are uncomfortable with the author's explicit sexual recollections would have no issue buying a Katy Perry or Miley Cyrus record for their young child or themselves. Rebecca's book is not sanitized sexual memoirs as marketin This book is fabulous. One of the few memoirs that accurately gives the reader an idea of what the Bay Areaa was like before the dotcoms and staggering wealth appeared, irrevocably altering the landscape of the real Bay Area forever. It is interesting that so many readers who are uncomfortable with the author's explicit sexual recollections would have no issue buying a Katy Perry or Miley Cyrus record for their young child or themselves. Rebecca's book is not sanitized sexual memoirs as marketing, her book is about her formative experiences and the impact they had. For a lot of tweens and teens left alone by 20 something Me-Era parents, sexual experimentation and being at risk was a given regardless of what race you were. It was, and still stands as, the most sexually charged/open time in industrialised history. There were NO parental filters for children anywhere unless you lived in an ultra religious household. This is why so many of us in Rebecca's generation who had artistic parents are now hands on parents, parents later in life or not parents at all. We know first hand that if there is no stability then parenting should not be attempted. We saw marriages become volatile, fall apart and then stability, residence, familiar faces vanish overnight. The fact that the author is able express her sexuality (and even drug use) with all the negative and positive implications is huge. Female artists of colour are often marginalized for having sexual appetites, experiences and interests. They are seen as "confused victims" to make liberals comfortable and deemed "uncivilised" to make conservatives feel smug. Due to her singular ability to see herself honestly and not defer to white OR liberal supremacy, Rebecca eclipses both of these requirements by scholars of the academic industrial complex. Thus this book has a special place in the pantheon of racial studies that is only going to grow more impressive with time.

Unsavoury/explicit details seem fine to many readers here when set in Victorian England or Paris in the 1930s but the 70's/80's of the Bay Area described in vivid detail does not carry the same snob appeal. Thi is where the book gets real. Rebecca takes us back there to go shoplifting at Stonestown or talk to the Hunter's Point corner pusher. And while there is anger and bewilderment there also is little to no bitterness. In many ways the book is surprisingly light hearted. There are a lot of funny moments ("you've got the crackers..." which refers to her male relatives who tease her about being 'well spoken') along with some very scary ones such as when she is slipped psychedelic drugs or when an errant friend vanishes after defaulting on a drug loan.

Another aspect which was surprising was the shifting nature of being the child of an well known artist. They may have their boutique 'issues' but they always have 'a name' to fall back on and 'pave their way', right? Wrong. This book dramatically changes one's perception in that regard. Book sales were not especially lucrative and did not create a safe place for Rebecca, they simply created a career path for her mother first and foremost. In a sad paradoxical twist of second wave feminism, the freedom of a career and the need to build ones fame into "the mold" leads Alice Walker to marginalize another female- in this case her own young daughter. In regards to how Alice Walker and her ex-husband's parenting is portrayed, knowing the era and that kind of parenting first hand, I thought Rebecca Walker actually held a lot back.

The historian Martin Duberman once wrote:

"We have become too aware of how reductive the standard identity categories of gender, class, race and ethnicity are when trying to capture the actual complexities of a given personality...Besides, many people have overlapping identities that compete for attention over time; and how we rank their importance in shaping our personalities can shift, which in turn leads to a re-allocation of political energies."

It applies to this book, she sees herself this way- unique and shifting. Rebecca is a very intelligent person who sees through all sides of the hypocrisy in liberalism, feminism, Gay rights...she has had a very honest non privileged life which has shaped her world view. Walker offers solutions and intelligent alternate observations in this work about how to navigate life if you present as "other".Do read this book!

*Trivia: The near blind and unnamed racist N bomb dropping father of Rebecca's teenage boyfriend and who is refereed to anonymously, is, clearly to me, Shel Tamy who produced The Kinks early works and The Who's first album, later fleecing the latter for millions. ...more

flag Like · see review

May 13, 2008 T.J. rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommends it for: multiracial folk, would-be activists, human interest story readers

Shelves: teej-s-favourites , negritude , my-halfrican-experience

As a half black, half white male, this book was electrifying as a senior in high school. "I am not a movement child," Rebecca Walker intones, purposefully denying the fact that her parents' marriage was based in part on 60's interracial idealism and exuberance. Her story manages to echo the ache and loneliness and inherent contradiction of multiracial upbringing, particularly in the middle class America that I know so well. Thankfully, Walker rarely slips into over-sentimentality or emotional te ...more

flag Like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 99 100 next »

Autobiography > Memoir

60 users

Biography

24 users

Race

20 users

Cultural > African American

15 users

Biography > Autobiography

13 users

Feminism

12 users

Literature > Jewish

11 users

Biography Memoir

11 users

Religion > Judaism

10 users

See top shelves...

Books by Rebecca Walker

Baby Love: Choosing Motherhood After a Lifetime of Ambivalence

To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism

One Big Happy Family: 18 Writers Talk About Polyamory, Open Adoption, Mixed Marriage, Househusbandry, Single Motherhood, and Other Realities of Truly Modern Love

Black Cool: One Thousand Streams of Blackness

More…

Share This Book

Share on your website

title link	preview: Black White and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self
avg rating	preview: Black White and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self Goodreads rating: 3.73 (2041 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/498979.Black_White_and_Jewish?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1175270236l/498979.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/498979.Black_White_and_Jewish?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Black White and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self by Rebecca Walker[/url]