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4.16 AVERAGE
4.16 AVERAGE
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
It is always weird for me to rate memoirs because it feels like judging a person's life, not their writing. That said, as a WOC and transracial, interracial adoptee, I am really glad this book exists. Too often as an adoptee AND as a WOC, our stories are over looked and when they are told, they are over simplified and told from the white parent perspective. "Surviving the White Gaze" does a beautiful job at sharing all of the complexities of adoption and growing up in a transracial home in a white community. My hope is that adoptee voices continue to be amplified and centered in the adoption story, so that other adoptees can realize their feelings of trauma are not alone.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racism, Sexual assault
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
Agh, Rebecca Carroll—you really had me in the first half! But much like a TV show at risk of cancellation, the last half of this memoir was full of a number of ‘storylines’ that often went unexplored and felt unnecessarily rushed. But when she was really in her groove, Carroll does a fantastic job in Surviving the White Gaze. Much like (my absolute favourite memoir of all time) Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me, she manages to explore the psychological tension of her relationship with her mother (and her adoptive family and white peers) while simultaneously creating an incredibly vivid backdrop. When she explores her adolescent years, Caroll is at her peak—subtly espousing Black Feminist Thought through her analyses of desirability politics, the nuclear family, and motherhood.
Her college years, however, become a bit of a muddle to wade through. While I appreciated her discussions of the complicated dynamics in both her romantic/sexual and familial relationships, the picture felt very incomplete. I do think it’s important to acknowledge that this story is a.) very painful to share and b.) there are limits to how, I, a non-Black person can criticize her framing of this story. But, I think it’s important to note that there are some major flaws in this structure. While life cannot have neat endings—and memoirs certainly don’t need to, there was little to no resolution to any of the pain Carroll constantly lived through. This doesn’t mean she needs to fabricate a ‘happy ending’ (because her lived experience is intrinsic to who she is), but I didn’t even understand where she stood with half the people in her life—which was the epicenter of the memoir.
With all that being said, Carroll is a phenomenal writer. While the latter half of this book was not to my taste, after finishing the memoir, I started looking into her articles. And wow, I want to write just like her when I grow up.
Her college years, however, become a bit of a muddle to wade through. While I appreciated her discussions of the complicated dynamics in both her romantic/sexual and familial relationships, the picture felt very incomplete. I do think it’s important to acknowledge that this story is a.) very painful to share and b.) there are limits to how, I, a non-Black person can criticize her framing of this story. But, I think it’s important to note that there are some major flaws in this structure. While life cannot have neat endings—and memoirs certainly don’t need to, there was little to no resolution to any of the pain Carroll constantly lived through. This doesn’t mean she needs to fabricate a ‘happy ending’ (because her lived experience is intrinsic to who she is), but I didn’t even understand where she stood with half the people in her life—which was the epicenter of the memoir.
With all that being said, Carroll is a phenomenal writer. While the latter half of this book was not to my taste, after finishing the memoir, I started looking into her articles. And wow, I want to write just like her when I grow up.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism, Sexual assault
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
This book felt incredibly scattered and in some ways disingenious. While the author does a fair job at discussing the eerie and sinster feelings of being surrounded by whiteness as person of color ,her narrative struggles. At times she seemed to present her story as if she was able to process the tramua and happenings of her childhood in a very nunanced and expert way ( even while she was in the mist of these experiences) which to me seemed inplausible. Also I not sure the previlgedes of being biracial were explored here although her mother tries to point this out to her several times ( admittedly in a very hapzard and emotionally crushing way) . I was also sort of put off by her decision to " choose" to be black which I suppose I can't judge since I am not biracial but something about her process of doing so seemed odd.
Thank you to the @stackspodcast for putting this book on my radar. I read the book and then listened to the fantastic interview with the author, Rebeca Carroll. This memoir is about growing up as the biracial adopted child of white parents in a small rural town where she was the only Black child at her school and not taught about Black history or culture. Can you imagine not seeing yourself reflected in your family or community? I can’t – I have never had that experience. That’s why reading books like this are so eye-opening.
One glaring example of the racism Carroll had to navigate on her own: her middle school had a “slave day”! Boys bid on girls and girls bid on boys - you had be a slave for a day for the highest bidder.
Exploring how her proximity to whiteness impacted her life, she recognized the following: “Cocooned within a whiteness where my brown skin was mocha-colored, I spoke with an inflection similar to that of my white brother and sister, and my adult guardians were welcomed and centered wherever we went. I was being ushered through my life via the powerful passport of white privilege.” But her proximity to whiteness did not protect her from the racism she encountered in her daily life and her family didn’t help her understand her racial identity at all.
Carroll talks about the impact of white beauty standards on how she saw herself (especially with respect to her hair and her weight) and feeling like boys either didn’t find her attractive or fetishized her. “My body, I was learning, was a prop or toy at the hands of my white male peers. A brown body to explore, pass around, and violate, but never fall in love with or date.”
As Rebecca grew up and became a student of Black history, culture and critical race theory, she came to this powerful realization: “Being adopted into a white family that did nothing see or care or think about my blackness or my experience navigating a racist country had always felt lonely and isolating, endlessly confusing, but now it just felt cruel.”
One glaring example of the racism Carroll had to navigate on her own: her middle school had a “slave day”! Boys bid on girls and girls bid on boys - you had be a slave for a day for the highest bidder.
Exploring how her proximity to whiteness impacted her life, she recognized the following: “Cocooned within a whiteness where my brown skin was mocha-colored, I spoke with an inflection similar to that of my white brother and sister, and my adult guardians were welcomed and centered wherever we went. I was being ushered through my life via the powerful passport of white privilege.” But her proximity to whiteness did not protect her from the racism she encountered in her daily life and her family didn’t help her understand her racial identity at all.
Carroll talks about the impact of white beauty standards on how she saw herself (especially with respect to her hair and her weight) and feeling like boys either didn’t find her attractive or fetishized her. “My body, I was learning, was a prop or toy at the hands of my white male peers. A brown body to explore, pass around, and violate, but never fall in love with or date.”
As Rebecca grew up and became a student of Black history, culture and critical race theory, she came to this powerful realization: “Being adopted into a white family that did nothing see or care or think about my blackness or my experience navigating a racist country had always felt lonely and isolating, endlessly confusing, but now it just felt cruel.”
Writer and cultural critic, Rebecca Carroll’s memoir “Surviving the White Gaze” tells her compelling story of being a biracial Black child adopted by White parents and coming of age in a predominantly White New England community.
Carroll walks us through her complex journey of racial identity development as a Black girl in 1970s & 1980s New Hampshire. She shows how early on, she recognizes how Whiteness is, in many spaces, seen as the standard of beauty, sophistication and intelligence.
What complicates things even further is Carroll’s relationships with those closest to her. Her parents operate off of the ideology of being well-meaning white folks, who practice a “colorblind” approach to race.
Her White biological mother, who she meets as a teen is a PIECE OF WORK. She fetishizes Black men, promotes racist Black stereotypes and, in many ways, attempts to sabotage Carroll’s racial identity development... I was angry for the author when reading certain parts.
However, what makes this book triumphant is seeing Carroll show us how she literally went out of her way to curate Blackness in her life by seeking out Black friends, Black literature, Black cities and Black educational experiences.
I honestly think this book could be a miniseries. It’s timely, and could be incredibly informative for many types of people. From Black kids and young adults navigating white spaces, to White parents with Black children, and even educators, students, etc.
This is a riveting memoir which I believe we’ll be hearing a great deal about in the years to come.
Carroll walks us through her complex journey of racial identity development as a Black girl in 1970s & 1980s New Hampshire. She shows how early on, she recognizes how Whiteness is, in many spaces, seen as the standard of beauty, sophistication and intelligence.
What complicates things even further is Carroll’s relationships with those closest to her. Her parents operate off of the ideology of being well-meaning white folks, who practice a “colorblind” approach to race.
Her White biological mother, who she meets as a teen is a PIECE OF WORK. She fetishizes Black men, promotes racist Black stereotypes and, in many ways, attempts to sabotage Carroll’s racial identity development... I was angry for the author when reading certain parts.
However, what makes this book triumphant is seeing Carroll show us how she literally went out of her way to curate Blackness in her life by seeking out Black friends, Black literature, Black cities and Black educational experiences.
I honestly think this book could be a miniseries. It’s timely, and could be incredibly informative for many types of people. From Black kids and young adults navigating white spaces, to White parents with Black children, and even educators, students, etc.
This is a riveting memoir which I believe we’ll be hearing a great deal about in the years to come.
In the early 70s, Rebecca Carroll lives with her loving, adopted family in a rural New Hampshire town where she is the only Black person. At the age of 10, she meets her white mother and builds a relationship with her and her half brothers, and navigates her racial identity within these two families. Carroll aims to show her reader how the two very different relationships between her birth mother and her adoptive parents led to confusion with her identity and diminished self-worth.
This book is a unique coming of age memoir that shows how much representation matters. The story itself immediately drew me in, but what kept me reading was how Carroll turns a reflective lens on her past to show how important it is for kids to be encouraged to understand their identities and see themselves in the people around them. On one hand, there are Carroll’s adoptive parents who take a color-blind approach to her race, which I think a lot of adults taught their children; don’t speak about (and therefore learn about and engage with) race and it won’t be an issue. On the other hand, we have Carroll’s birth mother who co-opts her Blackness and claims to know more about it (as a white woman!) than she does, gaslighting her and repressing her in another way. Her birth mother often treats her more as an adult and a friend than has a child who should be nurtured. No spoilers but I read several parts of this book with my fist against my forehead, aghast at how the adults in her life speak to her.
Surviving the White Gaze is an apt title for this memoir, her whole life she was held up in the way that her white environment thought she should be, rather than looking at what she needed. This book sucked me in and I sped through it in a matter of hours. This was my first time reading Carroll’s writing and I look forward to picking up her past books. Thank you so much to Netgalley and Simon and Schuster for the chance to read this memoir early.
This book is a unique coming of age memoir that shows how much representation matters. The story itself immediately drew me in, but what kept me reading was how Carroll turns a reflective lens on her past to show how important it is for kids to be encouraged to understand their identities and see themselves in the people around them. On one hand, there are Carroll’s adoptive parents who take a color-blind approach to her race, which I think a lot of adults taught their children; don’t speak about (and therefore learn about and engage with) race and it won’t be an issue. On the other hand, we have Carroll’s birth mother who co-opts her Blackness and claims to know more about it (as a white woman!) than she does, gaslighting her and repressing her in another way. Her birth mother often treats her more as an adult and a friend than has a child who should be nurtured. No spoilers but I read several parts of this book with my fist against my forehead, aghast at how the adults in her life speak to her.
Surviving the White Gaze is an apt title for this memoir, her whole life she was held up in the way that her white environment thought she should be, rather than looking at what she needed. This book sucked me in and I sped through it in a matter of hours. This was my first time reading Carroll’s writing and I look forward to picking up her past books. Thank you so much to Netgalley and Simon and Schuster for the chance to read this memoir early.