Walker Alice - Black, white, and Jewish: autobiography of a shifting self

P RAISE FOR

Black White and Jewish

Walker skillfully depicts her tangled upbringing, full of disappointment and privilege.

Time

Walker masterfully illuminates differences between black and white America. A heartbreaking tale of self-creation.

People

A cautionary tale about the power of race in shaping identity A highly readable debut.

Entertainment Weekly

A well-written refusal to ignore old wounds.

The Boston Globe

Her outsider status equips her with a sharp eye for analysis and narrative detail. And her restrained prose is refreshing in this age of gushing confession.

The Washington Post Book World

Black White and Jewish is a frank, detail-rich look at her upbringing.

Chicago Tribune

Her book is an attempt to not only come to grips with her own identity, but to expose the pain and turmoil that come with shifting back and forth. It is a stunningly honest account, almost painfully self-revelatory.

San Francisco Chronicle

A poignant, spare memoir.

Chicago Sun-Times

Black White and Jewish is Rebecca Walkers anthem of independence, the compelling diary of a Movement Baby who combats her own racial insecurities.

The Dallas Morning News

Walker treats her youth as a mystery to be slowly unraveled.

USA Today

Moving between those worldsand the biases each held against the otherleft Rebecca fighting to sort out her identity, which she does so eloquently in her new memoir, Black White and Jewish.

USA Weekend Magazine

[Walker] has been brokering an equally difficult peace between her racial and sexual selves.

Talk (hot titles for a cold season)

Walkers descriptions of her near-constant battle to define herself racially are poignant and intricately constructed.

The San Diego Union-Tribune

Black White and Jewish is Walkers personal account of that real worlda place that nourishes anger and cynicismand her eventual discovery that the only real world is the one we create.

Seattle Weekly

Episodic, brief chapters punctuated by spare poetic details reinforce her idea of herself as a vaporous being who floats in and out of her skin.

Dream Hampton, The Village Voice

In this lyrical and devastatingly honest memoir, Rebecca Walker bravely shares the details of childhood agonies associated with mixed heritage.

The New York Observer

The book examines her search for herself with poetic style and touching detail.

Rocky Mountain News

Walker has crafted a beautiful memoir about race, sexuality, and spirituality.

Honey

Rarely does a writer convey the angst of a young biracial womans search for self-identity in a society hell-bent on defining her as she seduces readers with her sharp insights and her beguiling prose. Walker pulls it off in this chronicle of her life.

Savoy

A streetwise, candid look at the difficulties of being biracial If her book is any indication, building bridges between different worlds is one of her giftsa matter of survival while she was growing up, but now a choice.

Time Out New York

Rebecca Walker repeatedly testifies to our deep, our bitterly frustrated wishes to be loved well. In this moving firsthand understanding of how American constructions of race can become a heartbreaking setup for the children of love who will not yield to hateful boundaries, she makes us tremble at the vulnerability and the wistfulness of her trajectory through unpredictable security, abandonment, affection, and neglect. She summons our best hopes that she will stay with such hard, beautiful work as her life will always require, and imply.

June Jordan, author of Soldier: A Poets Childhood

In this powerful memoir, Rebecca Walker mines the terrain of her own biracial upbringing in a voice that is deeply affecting and wholly her own. In Black White and Jewish, Walker tackles her own complicated history with passion and lucidity. This is more than just a personal narrative: it is the story of a whole generation of movement babies for whom the definition of home was always and already up for debate.

Danzy Senna, author of Caucasia

Walker has written, in blunt, stunning, intelligent language, a vital story about what it meant to come of age in two worlds. Black White and Jewish is a virtual road mapa guide through the complexities of race and childhood.

asha bendele, author of The Prisoners Wife

Rebecca Walkers memoir is a beautifully written meditation on the creation of a womans sense of self. It is about being black, white, and Jewish, born in the throes of the political sixties, coming-of-age in the conflicted and complex eighties and nineties; but it is also about being a child and then a woman of profound sensitivitiescapable of deep insights. It is about trying to find ones way through racial categories, racism, and bigotry. Through it all, Rebecca Walker finds the courage to forgive and to love.

Jane Lazarre, author of Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness:Memoir of a White Mother of Black Sons

Her artfulness in baring her psyche, spirit, and sexuality will attract a wealth of well-deserved praise.

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Her impressive debut nicely complements other recent writing about growing up in a multiracial family.

Library Journal (starred review)

Also by Rebecca Walker

To Be Real:

Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism

Black, White, and Jewish:

Autobiography of a Shifting Self

What Makes a Man:

22 Writers Imagine the Future

Baby Love:

Choosing Motherhood After a Lifetime of Ambivalance

BLACK WHITE
AND JEWISH

Autobiography of a Shifting Self

REBECCA WALKER

RIVERHEAD BOOKS

NEW YORK